Magic Mirror
by periferal
Summary: Mirror!Universe of Harry Potter originally posted on AO3. WIP, pairings currently unknown. The Malfoys (who are good) are forced to adopt Hermione by Dumbledore (who is bad). Voldemort was a freedom fighter, that sort of thing. Hermione must go to school, make friends, and figure out the truth about her past. All that sort of thing.
1. The Girl Who Vanished

_Author's Notes: This is a mirror!verse of Harry Potter, and definitely still WIP. It's not exactly manipulative!Dumbledore, though I guess I might be working within some of the conventions of that genre. This is crossposted from AO3._

Mr. and Mrs. Granger were both dentists. Both a bit quirky, Mrs. Granger already planning to make some sort of necklace out of her child's baby teeth, but nothing more than that, really. Some activism in terms of race and gender politics, but nothing terribly high profile. Nothing strange, in any case. No enemies, no one with motive to kidnap their child.

It was near their daughter's second birthday. Mr. Granger had only just returned to work, and there was a nanny watching over Hermione. She was an older woman, whose style of dress was dated enough to be called eccentric instead of off putting, but she was good at looking after the child, who genuinely seemed to like her, unlike the other nannies that the Grangers had tried to employ, who had been terrible enough that Mr. Granger had delayed his return to the shared dental practice by another six months.

The Grangers lived in a relatively modest flat, in an inexpensive but not particularly bad part of London. The nanny was in the kitchen, having just put Hermione to bed. She could talk now, just a few words but there was speech. Mostly "mommy," babbled, over and over and over.

She reached into the cabinet over the sink and to the left, and grabbed a glass. Turning the faucet for the water, she filled it, and turned the water off. The day had been unusually long, both Grangers beginning their work at the dental office unusually early, some special client.

She crept into Hermione's room, making sure not to wake the sleeping child. There was a chest of drawers with all her clothes in it, but more importantly it had a flat surface within arms reach. There was no bedside table, not yet.

The nanny rummaged through the pockets of her robes- it was chillier tonight, even with the heat on, and it would be too noticeable if she used magic, heating charms took time to wear off. She closed her fingers around a small box, a perfect cube. It looked like an unusually small music box. She placed it on the drawers, then removed a thin stick from her other pocket. Holding the stick in her right hand, she tapped the box once on the top.

Taking the box, she gently placed it into the child's hands, and Hermione immediately curled around it.

The nanny padded out of the room, shutting the door with behind her. Hermione would be safe in the wizarding world, where she belonged, quite soon.

Mrs. Granger did not cry, and Mr. Granger only stared white faced in shock.

The nanny had called them in a panic- Hermione was gone.

The patient had understood the urgency and the two dentists rushed home, hoping that perhaps their child had only wandered off and hidden somewhere. Impossible considering she was in a crib but it was better than her disappearing into thin air.

They searched the flat, finding nothing, and eventually Mrs. Granger called the police.

A missing child case was opened, money donated by friends and vigils kept by candlelight in churches but the grim truth soon settled over the Grangers and their circle of friends and aquaintances. Hermione was gone.

If someone had looked harder they would have noticed that hers was not the first disappearance in this part of London, but the problem was no one was looking in the right places for connections. The police searching for her assumed it had something to do with the respective races of the parents, and acted accordingly.

The nanny had disappeared soon after the child but she had no known connections to any group considered willing to kidnap interracial children from their homes, and so that path had been quickly dropped.

The trail grew cold quickly, but the Grangers kept pleading publicly for someone to please bring their child home.

They were quite the picture of a couple mourning the loss of their young daughter.

They were both short. Mr. Granger had a slowly thinning head of hair, shot through with streaks of grey he thought made him look distinguished, while Mrs. Granger was younger by two years and had kinky hair. They both tended to have very large, sad eyes on camera, both on the older side. Mrs. Granger would cling to her husband, begging whoever had taken their daughter to please return her, she was just a little girl.

Even on an ancient black-and-white box television, their grief was apparent, and quite genuine.

Professor Minerva McGonagall, watching the news from an elderly faux leather couch, where an obvious hole from a cigarette burn causing the entire thing to sag, sighed.

It was never pleasant taking young children from their parents. The Grangers seemed nice enough when she was watching them, though they had the usual attitude of muggle city dwellers towards stray cats. But they were muggles, and therefore automatically not fit parents for the girl they had named Hermione.

She would be better off as a ward. Raising another child would not be so difficult for the Malfoys, and in any case there were worse punishments for aiding a rebel than fostering an orphan for a decade. But they were one of the oldest families in Wizarding Britain and there was no telling how public opinion would change if the Malfoys along with the other families that aided the Rebel Lord were killed.

Or so Albus explained to her. It was Minerva's opinion that Hermione would be better off with the Weasleys. But despite being one of the staunchest families for the Light, they remained poor partially by choice and partially by nature of their already large family. Unlike the Malfoys they did not have the means to raise an extra child.

Minerva turned, wand held loosely in her hand hand as the doors to the sitting room opened. It was Albus, the deluminator in his non-wand hand. She lowered her wand and he smiled at her.

"My dear, had I been another under polyjuice, that would not have been very wise, do you think?" he said, coming to sit beside her on the couch.

"I hold the secret to this place, you could be no one else," she said. "You will be far too much like Alastor if you keep that sort of questioning up," she added, giving him a small smile.

On the television, Mrs. Granger finished speaking, and the news station changed to some sort of news about the Americas. Minerva got up and shut the television off.

"They suspect nothing, at least not publicly."

"I could have told you as much without that device," Albus said.

"It is very strange that they are so public about the child's disappearance- when I was young there would have been a quiet funeral, and that would be all." She kept the television in hidden house so she could watch these sorts of things. It was amusing, seeing what grief rang true and what grief rang hollow. "I still believe it would be better to place the child with the Weasleys, Albus."

Her colleague shook his head, peering at her over half moon glasses with eyes that remained a startling blue despite the gloom, "I understand your objections, but consider. The Malfoys have only just declared that they are no longer allies with the insurgents, conveniently soon after Tom pulled that great trick with the Potter's son. Yet we cannot post Aurors at their home without good reason- Rufus Scrimgeour remains stubbornly on neither side and is not loyal directly to me, unlike most of the Ministry. He at least insists I follow the letter of the law in this case, and having a mudblood ward at their home gives us that reason to have them under watch. There is no reason to watch the Weasleys, you know just as well as I do how devoted their matriarch is to our side."

Minerva hesitated, then nodded. "As always, you seem to know best. I understand your reasoning," she said, keeping her remaining doubts to herself. Albus was first and foremost Headmaster of Hogwarts. He always seemed to know what was best for muggleborns unlucky enough to have living muggle parents.

There was silence for a time. Hermione was the most recent muggleborn discovered, hopefully the last for this season. Minerva stood up. "I am returning to the school now, I trust you will be overseeing the placement of the child with the Malfoys?" she said. Albus nodded, still seated on the couch.

Minerva left the the house, taking only the necessary steps to get outside the anti-(dis)apparition wards she'd placed within the fabric of the fidelius charm. After the familiar compression of disapparation, and Minerva apparated in the front entryway of the Three Broomsticks in Hogmeade. Leaving the still busy restaurant, the transfiguration professor crouched, fluidly changing from human form to that of a grey-furred tabby with distinctive spectacle shaped markings around her eyes.

She padded off towards Hogwarts. It would take her less time in this form to get to Hogwarts, and like this she was not likely to be noticed by any odd staff member still roaming the grounds for a wayward student.

Unnoticed by the cat, a bird with amazingly bright plumage tracked her movements from its perch on the highest tower of the castle, unmoving.

Giving a soft trilling cry, Fawks took off to make his nightly loop of the school, to hunt and see that all was well.

The cat, now at the castle, returned to human form, and Minerva made the rest of the walk to her rooms in Gryffindor tower on two legs.

(L/N)

Lucius Malfoy did not like the world he was raised in. And so, he had turned to a man who had promised to make it all better.

Things went worse than expected.

It was strange to Narcissa, his wife of very few years, how passionate Lucius was about Tom's cause, even nearly a year after he had supposedly abandoned it, "coming to his senses" after their leader's death. Or hopefully not quite death, if only so that the horrors they had all to willingly chosen to enact would not be in vain.

It was Narcissa who first opened the notification that the Malfoys had been chosen to be the guardians of the most recent "rescued" Muggleborn.

That night was not the first night Lucius cried in her arms, and it would not be the last.

The letter had come with a very cleverly hidden threat to the well-being of their son, and what else could they do?

At least it seemed like they would be permanently the new parents of this child, which would mean not as much disruption for her as there could have been.

Draco slept on, having been put down for the night long before the phoenix carrying the letter arrived.

Molly Weasley held Hermione Granger gingerly in her arms, watching the stars appear. There was very little harm a two year old could do, but it was one of those children, if they could get magic somehow from muggle parents who knew what they would do to proper wizards.

She would not have minded raising the child as her own, though it would have required giving her both a new name and performing some tricky blood-binding and memory spells. It wouldn't do for others to know that they had a child not her own, it would certainly have called Molly's own ability to bear children into question and that would not have done at all.

Arthur on the other hand firmly agreed with Albus' decision to place it with the Malfoys. "We can't afford another child, dear," he had said. Which in her mind was utter nonsense- they did well enough even with seven, though she supposed that Ginny's recent birth would make the appearance of a two year old somewhat questionable. Oh well. In the end she had come around to her husband's way of thinking, and had agreed to escort the muggleborn child from McGonagal's safe house.

So here Molly was, making her way to the entrance of Malfoy Manor.

She was greeted by a tall figure in dark formal robes who was leaning on a silver tipped cane, standing before a shadowed wrought iron gate. The gate was shut, and the figure had long silver hair that looked better groomed than it ever had in the wanted images that once filled the front pages of the Daily Prophet, unmoving except the occasional blink. Now, the eyes were less sunken but they were still red-rimmed, tired.

It would have served him right for him to have gone to Azkaban, but Molly supposed that having to deal with the child would be some sort of replacement for prison. At least, it would have been for her.

Lucius Malfoy stared at the child in the Weasley woman's arms.

She appeared nearly two, as healthy as Draco. He had assumed, when Dumbledore had "asked" him to take in the child that she was neglected by her muggle parents, that was the only reason he would take a child from her parents, muggle or magical alike.

Evidently he continued to overestimate the Headmaster's sympathy for muggles. As far as Dumbledore was concerned this child's natural parents were neglectful by definition.

It was a test. He knew it was a test, he should refuse the child, demand she be placed back with her parents who must be so worried at this point. Lucius would be.

But he had a child now, and even the pendants would not protect him and Narcissa forever. He had to accept this child and raise her, effectively endorsing her kidnapping, or else risk imprisonment for himself and his wife. Draco would be an orphan, and possibly raised to hate him.

"Will you allow me to enter your property, Lord Malfoy, or would you prefer I give you it here as though I were smuggling contraband," the Weasley woman said, looking at the child in her arms with about as much affection and care as she would a particularly ugly garden gnome.

Lucius gestured with his free hand at the girl, or so he assumed from the pink blanket she was wrapped in. "Why do you even hold the child in your arms, if you hate her so much?" he asked.

"It is still a child, even if it is presumably quite dangerous," Lucius studiously avoided commenting on that particular bit of nonsense. Weasley, unaware of the silver haired man's thoughts, continued on. "Also, though I still do not understand why, your property is quite near a village that is almost entirely populated by muggles and thus I do not have permission to openly practice magic here. If I had, I assure you I would have carried the child using a levatating spell at the very least." She glanced at his cane and frowned. The wizard winced, evidently she had assumed it only decoration, and now she had figured it out.

Warily, making sure to not take his eyes off her, he reached behind himself to place that same free hand on the bars of the gates. They opened with the groan of old metal and unlocking spells.

"Walk ahead of me- the path is winding but not long, you will not get lost nor miss the Manor," he said. "And of course, as you must see I will walk slower than you."

The woman huffed, and muttered something to the effect of former rebels projecting their own untrustworthiness but, though of course he didn't say it, trust in people like the woman walking in front of him was what got him his limp in the first place.

He winced as he began to walk down the path, about four paces behind Molly Weasley. He still was not quite used to the gait required to walk with a minimum of pain, even with the cane. Leaning heavier on it, he continued on.

The grounds in the front of the manor were not as expansive as those behind it, of course, and the path was lit with werelights and the little light from the sun still filtering over the horizon. The walk took twenty minutes. Lucius did not say anything, and Weasley was concentrating on following the path and holding the child.

He could ask the child's name inside, or Narcissa could. He had asked her to meet the Weasley woman. She had two good hands with which to take the child, meaning that there would be no time in which she spent time inside their home. But Narcissa had insisted, insisting that it would be more suspicious if they didn't let the woman into their home to look around.

When they got to the front doors, large and made of hard wood, carved and inlaid with silver, that made Lucius feel tiny as he looked at them, he knocked on the left door w-ith his free hand three times.

"How does the mockingbird sing?" Narcissa asked through the pendant.

"In faith," Lucius whispered in response. They would not be able to reuse this pass code, that was for certain, Weasley was glancing at him curiously.

The doors swung inwards, opening into an entry hall too plain for its doors.

"I expected more finery" Weasley said.

Lucius shrugged.

The hall led to another set of doors and a staircase. At the foot of the staircase stood Narcissa. Like Lucius she was wearing dark robes, unlike him she had her hair tied up. Unlike Lucius she wasn't trying to hide how exhausted she was.

"Hello," she said. "This is the child then?"

Weasley nodded. "I would like to give it to you now, and then leave. Neither of us want me to stay here any longer than I have to, I would think," she said.

Narcissa walked over to her, and the child was mutely handed off.

"I assume you can walk yourself back down the path? I'll set the wards to let you out," Lucius said.

"What's her name?" Narcissa asked.

"Hermione, apparently. Too pretty a name, if you ask me." With that, Weasley left the hall and the Malfoys, the doors shutting behind her.

The two wixen watched her leave. "Is Draco asleep?" Lucius asked. Their son had been down when he'd gone out to wait for Weasley, but if he wasn't anymore they could get introducing him to Hermione done tonight.

"Yes," Narcissa said. "They can meet each other tomorrow." She turned, making her way to the nursery.

Lucius followed her up the stairs.

(L/N)

Draco Malfoy was a little older than two, and already he could walk and speak with enough coherence to get what he wanted to communicate across a majority of the time. He did not sleep in a crib, instead he slept in a bed that had been shrunk, with barrier spells on either side to make sure he did not fall off.

His nursery was a large room on the third floor of the manor, by the wall facing the more expansive grounds behind the main house. There were three moderate sized windows on the outside wall, a fourth one near a corner long having been bricked over, presumably to cut down on the number of windows countable for taxation some centuries before.

The Malfoy heir's eyes had settled on a silver much like his father's, and the thin fuzz of hair on his head would very likely turn out a similar shade. He looked perfectly healthy, if a bit small for his age, his parents having done their best to shield him from the worst effects of the war.

In his bed there was a small stuffed dragon that occasionally puffed smoke from its nostrils, and would fly in circles over Draco's head. It was in the silver and green colors of the Slytherin House at Hogwarts, the only real example of his parents' house in the room.

Normally, Draco would wake up alone, cry possibly and then one of his parents would arrive, and eventually he would stop crying and be fed if it was the morning, or just put back to sleep if it was the night.

By some miracle he had slept through the night this time, clutching the little dragon to himself. When he woke up, his parents were already there, which was interesting but not entirely concerning. Still holding the stuffed dragon, he pulled himself up by himself and felt around to find a good place on the barrier spell to hold onto. Having accomplished this task, he let out a curious "What?" and pointed at his dad, who was standing over what looked like a second bed, just like his.

This was strange. He did not need a second bed, this one was fine and had the dragon in it, and it was close enough to a window that if he was awake when it was dark outside and was standing properly at the foot of it, holding onto the frame, he could see the bright lights in the sky that he had seen the patterns in.

Looking closer, he noticed that there was another person who was small like him, instead of tall like mommy and father. That was strange, usually if he saw another small person it was in the big rooms outside his room, and this one seemed to be sleeping.

"What?" he said again, this time pointing at the small person. "Small," he added, and then pointed at himself.

"Her name is Hermione, she's living with us, now," his father said, walking over to Draco's bed. "Up?" he asked, and the small boy nodded very seriously.

He was now being held, but in a way that meant he was facing his father, which was okay, but also meant he couldn't see the new small person. He wiggled, "I want to see," he said, and his father understood and turned him so he was being held facing out. The name that father used was a word that Draco had never heard before, so he tried to say it. "Her-mee-oh-ny?" he tried, frustrated that he couldn't make the sounds. He tried a few more times, eventually getting the "Mione" part correct, and decided to stick with that. "Mione," he said, pointing at her.

She was in pajama robes like his, and had hair that was darker than his or his father's, and fuzzier looking. His mommy, who was standing closer to Mione's bed than Draco's, turned. She was smiling at him, and Draco smiled also, which also meant he could show off his teeth.

His mommy said, "She's sleeping, so you have to bed quiet."

Draco nodded very seriously, again. "I will be quiet," he said.

"That's good," his father said. Draco wiggled, wanting down now. He knew about the bad leg his father had, and too much up, he'd noticed, made the leg hurt more. After being set down on his feet, and after making sure his father was using the balance stick, he immediately walked across the room to the other small bed, wanting to see if there were the same invisible walls as on his. He pushed his hands out in front of himself. There was a wall. He looked back at his parents and grinned. "No falling, then?"

His father smiled at him, "No falling."

Draco had decided after some more looking at Hermione that he wanted to go back to sleep. His mommy had explained that Hermione had was very tired from how she got to the manor, and would probably be sleeping for a bit more time. So, he had decided to go to bed to, for reasons mysterious to his parents, though the decision itself was a relief to them.

It gave them time to talk, time they hadn't really had since Weasley deposited the kidnapped muggleborn child in Narcissa's arms. Narcissa gently laid Hermione in the bed she had prepared, a similarly shrunk bed with barrier spells on either side to Draco's, and placed a small gryphon on the bed with her, this creature a uniform brown as opposed to the house colors of her son's dragon.

She left the room first, and Lucius followed her at a slightly slower pace, the soft tapping of his cane added to his footsteps a bit heavier than usual. He had been standing for some time and had not slept, and that along with a curious Draco's desire to be held had taxed his bad leg more than he would want to admit. Narcissa led him to their shared office, a smaller room connected to the master bedroom by a small hallway.

This room was more ornate than many of the other rooms in the house. Most of the objects in the office had belonged to Lucius' father and so he had refused to sell them, even though he had been more than willing to sell most of his mother's artwork in the name of the cause. Instead of sitting at the stiff backed chair behind the desk, which was across the room from the door, Lucius collapsed into one of the armchairs nearer to the doorway, putting his bad leg up on an ottoman placed there for that purpose.

"This isn't okay," he said.

Narcissa sat down on the chair next to his, reaching to grab his hand. "No, it's not," she said. "This is exactly the sort of thing we were fighting against."

Lucius used his free hand to hold his head as his entire body seemed to sag on a particularly deep exhale. "We have no choice," he said, "they might hurt Draco."

"I know," Narcissa almost sighed, gripping her husband's hand even tighter. "We can take care of her, though, and try and shield her from some of the nonsense our world will throw at her."

"I don't know if we can," Lucius said. "We need to sleep," he added after a silence. Narcissa nodded.

"I love you," she said. Lucius tried to respond, but a lump in his throat and impending tears silenced him. The corners of his eyes already wet, he slowly heaved himself up, the short distance to their bedroom far more daunting than it should have been.

The tears they both shed in the few hours of rest they got until both Hermione and Draco woke up at dawn were just as much from grief as they were from sheer exhaustion. Narcissa held Lucius, hoping that she would be able to at least drive his nightmares away.

The few hours of sleep they got before the child monitoring charms alerted them were not terribly restful, but they were better than nothing at all.

 _Please review!_


	2. Early Days

_Author's Note: This chapter is slightly shorter, and isn't as… tight, I'd say, as the last one? But it has much needed time passing in it, and the introduction of Harry! Yay! Also, writing movement is hard, which is annoying. I've also reached the end of my queue in terms of writing chapters, so there's going to be a longer gap between this upload and the last one. Sorry :(_

(L/N)

Hermione spun in faster and faster circles in the rain, arms flung as wide as possible, head tilted up to feel the droplets on her face.

This would be hell on her hair, probably, and make it even more difficult to keep under control but that wasn't her concern at the moment.

Eight years had changed the somewhat frightened two year old child who had been first brought to Malfoy manor into a rapidly growing ten year old girl, all limbs and frizzed out hair. She was barefoot, wearing muggle trousers and a too-small dress for a shirt. Narcissa watched her from beneath the shelter of the back entrance, hoping that the warming charm she'd placed on the child was still laughing.

She was laughing, some mild accidental magic causing the rain to shimmer in colors technically impossible considering how overcast the day was.

Eight years old and still sometimes Narcissa couldn't help but wonder how Hermione's muggle family was doing, if they had had more children, if they were alright.

If it had been Draco who was taken- Narcissa pulled her robes tighter around herself- there was a chill, still, considering the weather.

Draco was safe, inside, most likely still putting together and taking apart one of the intricate but nonsensical machines his uncle Rudolphus had brought him for his most recent birthday.

"Hermione, it's time to go in!" she called, and the girl stopped, turning to face her, the magic suddenly dissipating. She was smiling.

"Coming!" she called back, and she ran to underneath the roof, doing her best to shake the rain off. Smiling, Narcissa cast a drying spell on her, though Hermione's hair still puffed out impressively, distracting the girl when some strands fell into her face.

They entered the manor house, Hermione insistently blowing on the curls going down into her eyes to try and get them to go somewhere else.

It was September- one more year until the time would come for the Malfoys to send both the children off to Hogwarts. Dumbledore had insisted, the old man wording his "or else..." as a polite inquiry into the health of their son.

What else was Narcissa meant to do? She did not even know Hermione's original last name- she was Hermione Malfoy, now, as good as little sister to Draco. They had even only stopped sharing rooms when they were seven, when arguments over toys had begun creating more than metaphorical explosions. There was no way for her, or her husband, to return the girl and Hermione did not seem to remember her original parents.

"Mama?" the girl in question asked, pulling Narcissa out of her thoughts, "Do you think Draco will let me play with the Contraption?"

"Most likely- you were able to fix it faster than him last time, so maybe if he's stuck."

Hermione gave her mother a brilliant smile and ran off to find her brother.

(L/N)

"Have you revealed the origin of the girl to anyone else?" the auror asked. He had a name, Lucius knew, but by this time the magical law enforcement officials who came to check up on him had all blurred together. In any case, there was no real point in him learning the man's name- the odds of Lucius being told a real name were slim at best.

Lucius shook his head. "No," he said, "why would we? Most assume she is some distant relation whose parents have passed," he added, "and have learned that we do not answer questions.

He took a moment to check his Occlumency shields- it was unlikely for the auror, an older looking black man, to have any skill in Legilimency, but it was better to check now than be surprised later- as he answered this question. It was a lie, though only slightly. He had told Rudolphus and some of the other rebel lords his daughter's origin.

At first it had been to perhaps find Hermione's birth parents and maybe at least check up on them, see how they were faring. He had wanted to know for himself how much what was a good thing for Narcissa and him had hurt this unknown couple. But then he had told them because they, as his family and as his former compatriots, did not deserve to have any secrets kept from them, especially of this nature.

Any sort of mental protection turned out to be unnecessary. Lucius could feel no sign of any mental probing, meaning that if it turned out the auror had any mental abilities (unlikely), they were of a caliber that his shields could not guard against. This was probably not the case, considering he had not yet been clapped in irons or _stupefied_ yet.

The auror only nodded, and did his best to give Lucius a probing look. It failed.

Eventually the man left with about as much information as the Ministry had before the check up.

He could not let Hermione and Draco know of this visit- it was Hermione's birthday. Today of all days, he couldn't do that.

(L/N)

Lucius watched Draco carefully demonstrating the current settings of the Contraption to Hermione, his now long silver hair tied back to be out of the way. The Contraption, a gift from Narcissa's brother-in-law, was a complicated mechanism that apparently was meant to demonstrate how various mechanical bits and pieces, both magical and mundane, fit together.

Though Weasley had not told the him or Narcissa Hermione's birthday the night she dropped the girl off, some weeks before their ward's third birthday Narcissa had received an owl from Dumbledore on the subject. Her tenth birthday had occured and passed some months ago, Yule as well and the time left before both children turned eleven was far too quickly running out.

Originally Narcissa had intended to send them both to Durmstrang- if everything went wrong again the children would be safe and far inland on the Continent. But Dumbledore had objected, and so both children would attend Hogwarts along with the much diminished population of magical children in the British Isles.

There was nothing else to do but accept it and hope that both would be safe, or as safe as they well could be.

Lucius had done the math and the two children would be in the same year as one of the Weasley boys, as well as the child of two of Dumbledore's strongest adherents, the Potters. The consequences of Tom's panicked attempts to stop their prophesied destruction of his forces had gone poorly, but perhaps- the silver haired man pulled himself out of his thoughts of the past and future, and focused again on the children playing in front of him.

There was little point to spending too much time worrying- already he and Narcissa had lost many hours of sleep discussing these matters at night, getting all their fears out then in order to stay happy seeming in front of the children.

There was no way for Lucius to know whether or not Hermione remembered her birth parents, and she did not know how tenuous her position as the second child of the Malfoy family truly was. All he could do was hope that he was a good enough father to make up for her lack of her original one, even though he could not, and did not intend to, truly replace him.

"Father, help us," Draco said. Both the children were glaring at the Contraption. Whatever setting they had put it on having proven much too hard, but neither child had called on Dobby or Mitz for help.

Lucius moved so that he was sitting by them, and peered at the thing. "I fear," he said, "that I have no idea what this "Contraption"," they both giggled, "is meant to be doing."

"Well, we're trying to get this," Hermione pointed to a small metallic sphere. It glinted dully in the light of the room, "to move here," she pointed to a step-like part, which connected through a long rounded piece of metal to another part, "in order to set off all these other steps, and push the ball back to the front to start it up again."

An interesting puzzle, definitely, and Lucius may just have seen this sort of thing before when building things with Rudolphus when he'd had spare time in his later years at Hogwarts. Looking at the Contraption more closely, he noticed that two parts that connected the hole where the sphere was obviously meant to be dropped and the step that started the chain reaction itself were out of alignment. Instead of telling the children outright, he made a big show of looking confused, and asked for help looking over that specific bit.

The noises of triumph as they got it working made Lucius grin. Even if he was running out of time, there was still time left, and that would have to be enough.

(L/N)

Encountering Molly Weasley in Diagon Alley by Madam Malkin's, the August before Draco and Hermione would be going off for their first years at Hogwarts, was the first time Narcissa had seen the Weasley matriarch since the night she had unceremoniously handed Hermione to her. They moved in different circles, generally, and though both of their husbands worked in the Ministry there was little reason for their respective worlds to intersect.

Molly evidently recognized who Hermione was- there were no other children that Narcissa would have had a reason to bring to the Alley along with Draco, and looked as though she wished to comment.

One of her many redheaded children, probably Ronald as he was still short and rather young looking, about the same age as Draco and Hermione, ran up to her before she could say anything to Narcissa and tugged on her sleeve.

"Fred and George told me they make you fight a troll for sorting," the boy said plaintively. Molly sighed and walked off after her son.

Before her own children could ask her questions she wasn't sure she could answer, Narcissa pressed on to the Owl Emporium- she intended to buy both Hermione and Draco their own birds, so that they would not have to use the school hours to send letters home.

"Who was that?" Hermione asked, "the boy, I mean, I know that that was Mrs. Weasley."

"That was Ronald," Narcissa answered as they made their way across Diagon Alley, "her youngest, I believe. He will be in your year at Hogwarts."

"Huh," her daughter eventually said, before returning to the task of making her way towards the shop.

Narcissa did her best not to breath a sigh of relief at the fact that Hermione didn't add any special significance to Molly Weasley, nor did she seem to remember the woman who had first given her to the Malfoys.

It had now been nearly nine years since the night Lucius had walked into the house behind the scowling red-headed woman, carrying a girl who in Narcissa's mind was now as much her child as the one she had given birth to. And yet she could not shake the guilt at the pain Hermione's muggle parents must have felt at the loss of their child, even though she knew that neither she nor her husband had much choice in taking her on.

She pulled herself out of her thoughts as the three of them arrived at their destination, and Narcissa smiled as Draco pushed his way excitedly into the cramped environment of the Owl Emporium and Hermione followed him a few steps behind, a little more cautiously than her older brother but still obviously interested in all the birds.

Standing just off the entrance to the store, in order to not block in and outgoing foot traffic, Narcissa looked over the store. The last time she had been in the dingy shop had been, well, a long time before, before she had married Lucius, even. Nothing much in it had changed, there were more exotic birds than she remembered but other than that it was the same, down to the smell.

She watched as Draco excitedly chatted with one of the service people, even as Hermione immediately went to the small bookshelf containing a couple battered books that most likely were on the care and feeding of owls, considering their location.

Molly Weasley, having definitely gone in a different direction, was nowhere to be found. Good. It was too early in the day for Hermione to be dealing with anti-muggleborn prejudice, especially since no one but Molly and whoever had taken the girl would even know her status as such.

The obvious difference in skin color between Hermione and every other Malfoy was not something easily explainable, but despite their status as a part of the rebel nobility the Malfoys still commanded enough power that most people did not question it, at least not in front of the Malfoys themselves.

(L/N)

The wall between platforms nine and ten at King's Cross looked ordinary enough. It was brick, red, ordinary. The trains came and went as trains did, with lots of noise and the shouting of people getting on and off.

A girl of average height and a boy who was slightly taller than normal looked at the wall, both a bit nervous. "You sure this will work?" Hermione asked Draco, regarding the wall with open suspicion. Their parents had given them basic instructions and then vanished.

Draco looked around to see if anyone was close and leaned close to his sister, whispering, "Uncle Rodolphus explained to me that the wall is an illusioned short-distance portal, we're going to be fine."

Hermione nodded. "That makes sense," she whispered back. The two children grabbed their carts, Draco's owl hooting nervously in her cage and Hermione's sitting sedately in his. They then accelerated as they moved towards the wall. Hermione did her best not to blink but try as she might, her eyes closed for a second as she reached what should be solid brick. She opened them and blinked again, trying to clear her vision before realizing that in fact, what she assumed was some sort of flaw in her vision was just steam that filled the entire platform.

Draco and Hermione looked at each other as the train, an ancient looking scarlet steam engine with "Hogwarts Express" written across the front, pulled into the station with a loud whistle. The door opened, and students of all ages began streaming on.

"Should we just... go on?" Draco asked, talking a bit louder than he usually did, in order to be heard over the people crowding on the platform. Hermione nodded.

"Probably," she said.

The two eleven year olds looked at each other, before Hermione firmly grabbed Draco's hand. "We are sitting together," she said.

Draco grinned, before asking "How are we going to carry our stuff on?"

Hermione sighed, and dropped Draco's hand. "Follow me," she said. Both carrying their trunks, they made their way with the other students into the train, immediately trying to find an empty compartment. This turned out to be more difficult than they thought it would be, older students having apparently arrived early to snag the better seats.

Draco eventually found what appeared at first to be an empty compartment, but when Hermione pushed the doors open she saw a small, black-haired boy sitting in a corner by the window, looking out. Without really thinking about it, Hermione grabbed Draco's hand and pulled him into the compartment, shutting the doors behind them.

The two Malfoy children sat on the seat across from the boy, and the three children sat in a not quite uncomfortable silence.

"Hello," Hermione eventually said. Draco turned in his seat to stare at her, and the black-haired boy looked up. "What?" she asks, "I don't like quiet."

"Hello," he said.

Hermione elbowed Draco. He glared at her. After a few seconds of sullen silence she prodded him again and he sighed, before turning to stare out the window of the compartment. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Harry Black," the boy said.

The name was familiar to Hermione, but only barely. She knew the Black family, and her Aunt Bellatrix would talk sometimes about her cousins, so she assumed Harry was one of those cousins. Wizarding Britain, especially the circles she moved in, was not exactly a very big world but she did not think she had ever met Harry in person.

Draco did not appear to be responding, still staring pointedly out the window, so Hermione decided to introduce the two of them for him. "I'm Hermione Malfoy, and this is Draco. Ignore him, he doesn't like strangers."

"Would he be more comfortable if I left?" he asked, and she stared at him.

"That's not what I'm asking," she said. "I'm saying I'm going to talk to you and you can just ignore him if he continues to be a moldy flobberworm."

"Oh," Harry said. "What do you want to talk about?"

Hermione was silent for about a second, before asking, "Have you ever read _Hogwarts a History_?"

Draco rolling his eyes was almost audible. "Not again," he said. Turning to Harry for the first time, he said, "she's obsessed with that book." After speaking, he realized he'd actually talked and he turned to glare at Hermione. "You're still a stranger," he said. "But you seem okay, I think."

Harry grinned nervously. "I haven't had a chance to read it, yet, preparation for school was a bit hectic," he said, replying to Hermione. "I might read it later though."

"You should," Hermione says. "I definitely didn't want to figure out the vanishing step by accident."

"I actually heard of that! Sirius tells me about his Hogwarts days a lot, and they mentioned it. Though they also said it might have moved," he said.

Hermione shrugged, "I'll trust the book," she said.

Just then, the three children heard a long, final whistle and Hermione felt the train begin to move.

To her surprise, Harry grinned, and seemed to vibrate with excitement at the sound. "I can't wait to start," he said, "magic school, you know?"

Hermione shrugged, "That's not so strange, you're not muggleborn, are you?" she asked.

"Oh, no, I'm not, I've just heard so much about Hogwarts," he said. Draco scowled at the both of them.

"There's no problem with that, Hermione we have the same dad," he said. Realizing what she'd said Hermione shifted awkwardly.

Silence. Harry opened his mouth, apparently hesitating, and said, "one of the people who raised me is a werewolf, and so I spent a lot of time in the muggle world, hiding."

"Oh," Draco said. "Huh."

Hermione glanced at him, and decided not to chime in with what exactly their parents had been doing as they grew. "We- even if you were muggleborn, we wouldn't mind," Hermione said, and Draco nodded.

What would have definitely been an incredibly awkward conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the woman with the food cart. Draco happily bought an absurd number of pumpkin pasties while Hermione bought some chocolate frogs. Harry bought multiples of each type, grinning. "I haven't had any magical candies in a year," he said, opening the packet of a chocolate frog.

The frog jumped out and onto the floor, and Hermione let out a startled laugh as Harry trapped it using his foot as he pulled the card out of the packaging. "Oh, Dumbledore," he said, looking at the benevolent looking photo of the Headmaster.

"I actually don't have him yet!" Draco said, and Harry stared at him.

"Really? He's one of the most common," he said, handing the card to Draco.

Draco shrugged, taking the card. "Defeated Gellert Grindelwald, worked with Nicolas Flamel," he read aloud from it. He then placed it image up on his leg as he went to open another frog packet. The photo of Dumbledore smiled benignly at Hermione, who without really thinking about it reached over to flip the card face down.

"Do you think Chocolate Frog card images can understand us?" she asked.

"No, I don't think so," Harry said. "I don't know if paintings really do either.

"Well they can talk at least," she said. "Do you know what house you'll be sorted into?" she asked Harry.

He shook his lapsed into a more comfortable silence, carefully making their way through Harry's candies. This was nice, Hermione considered. Maybe Harry would even be their friend.

 _Please review! (Seriously though, this author at least basically runs on hot chocolate, reviews and exhaustion. It's fun! :P)_


	3. First Night

_AN: Another transition chapter, I suppose. Introduces another character (yay!). Sorry for the delay in posting, I actually finished it a few days ago but I can only upload at school, and it was the weekend!_

(L/N)

Hogsmeade station was much smaller than Hermione had expected. The platform was crumbling brick, though that may have been deliberate, the station building itself small with a roof that jutted out over part of the platform in order to give some shelter from the elements to people waiting for the train. Two lanterns hung from the edge of the roof above either end of the platform. It was night now, the trip by train from King's Cross to here having taken longer than Hermione had expected. As she and Draco with Harry trailing behind them nervously left the Hogwarts Express, they were soon pressed closely together by the crush of the majority of the student body of Hogwarts all crowding onto one tiny platform.

Their collective attention was drawn to a giant man who towered over students and adults alike, holding a lantern that illuminated a bruised, harry face. He was smiling. "First years!" he called in a thick accent Hermione couldn't exactly place, "first years to me!"

What followed was ordered chaos, as Hermione, Draco, Harry and the rest of the first years did their best to follow the man's instructions as the older students tried to make their collective way off the platform, streaming around both sides of the building in order to get to something out of sight of the first year students.

"Through here!" the man called, and Hermione blinked as she noticed a stone archway set in the side of the previously windowless brick building. It was wide enough for the three of them to go through all at once, and instead of entering a tunnel, or the inside of the building, as Hermione expected, as that is what there appeared to be in the little she had been able to see of it from the platform, she stepped into a large, low-roofed cavern. There was silence as her year trickled through the archway. It was very strange, and very beautiful. This cave hadn't been mentioned anywhere in _Hogwarts: A History_.

They were by the shore of a lake, and a small fleet of little sailboats were all moored at just the right place to get in without getting too soaked, if one was careful. Hermione gasped and turned to Draco. "This is the Black Lake!" she whispered to him, "do you think we might see any mermaids?"

Harry, who was also close enough to hear her, asked, "Why would you want to see mermaids, they're scary. Or at least, Sirius says they are, I've never seen one," he added.

Hermione turned to Harry, grinning widely. "They're so interesting looking," she said, "their teeth are so pointy, and their language sounds like screams when they're above the water!"

Draco shook his head, but before he comment about lack of self sensible self preservation, the man with the lantern called "Four to a boat, everyone, four to a boat and no splashing!"

The three of them made their way to one of the nearer boats. Hermione clambered on first, Harry following close behind her. They then both helped Draco, all with minimal splashing and only mild flicking of water into Hermione's face on Draco's part.

As the boats filled, it looked as though they would be a boat of three, when the man made his way over to them, tall, stick thin figure by his side. "This is Ron!" the man said enthusiastically, "he couldn't seem to find himself a boat." To everyone's, including the boy's, surprise, the man picked him up and deposited him with strange gentleness in the boat.

Hermione could now see the boy was the same pale, red haired boy who had distracted Mrs. Weasley away from whatever she had been about to say to Hermione's mom in Diagon Alley, all those weeks ago. Other than the hair and freckles, the first thing Hermione noticed was that his robes were too small. Ronald then was apparently mostly called Ron, then. Interesting. She didn't actually know that many people who went by nicknames instead of their real names, the only exception she could think of being her cousin Tonks, and it was universally agreed upon by most of her family that Nymphadora was an incredibly stupid name.

She also noticed that Ron was staring intently at Draco, as if trying to place him, or place a family resemblance. "Are you a Malfoy?" he asked, and to Hermione's surprise the question just sounded... curious, instead of accusing, unlike all the other times she'd heard that question asked. Which was surprising, considering in the little Hermione's parents had spoken of Ron's mother they had mostly mentioned her near fanatical devotion to Professor Dumbledore.

Draco didn't answer for a few moments, and Ron looked as though he were about to stammer out something else when Draco finally said, "Yes, I am."

"Huh," Ron said, and he turned to Hermione. "Are you Hermione, then?" he asked, turning to her. He looked awkward for a moment, before admitting in a low voice, "I sort of though you'd look sick, or something, Mom doesn't speak too well of your parents. But she doesn't speak too well of a lot of people, so- she's wrong, right?"

Draco nodded firmly. "Yes," he said. "I'm surprised you took the time to ask."

Ron did a one shouldered shrug that made Hermione notice just how thin he was. "She said some pretty bad stuff about my Great-Aunt Muriel, but the one time I saw her, she seemed pretty cool. I dunno," he looked down, embarrassed, "you probably don't want to hear so much about my parents."

"It's okay," Hermione said, "but if you don't want to talk about it, that makes sense too."

By this time, the four of them had settled themselves as comfortably as was possible in a small wooden boat that did not appear to have any real form of cushioning charm on the seats. Draco had sat down next to Hermione immediately, and Harry was sitting next to Ron, listening to him and Draco talk with interest.

"How come you talked to him and not to me?" he asked, and Hermione wondered how serious the question was.

"I don't know," Draco said, and Harry nodded. "He surprised me. I don't know if you surprised me."

The background splashing and chattering of others getting into their little boats had slowly lessened as the four of them had talked, and Hermione looked up as the lantern-man called "And that's all of you, so let's head out!" from his own boat, and by some silent command or pre-determined spell (the man did not appear to have any sort of wand) the boats began to move silently over the still waters of the Black Lake.

"Do you think the sails are ever actually used, or are they just decorative?" Draco asked.

Harry answered by gesturing in the direction of the sail in general, and then around the whole boat, "See there? There aren't any ropes at all, and the sails are fixed to it and don't look like they can be taken down. Either these sailboats are meant to be controlled entirely through magical means or they're for the purpose of bring first years to the castle for the first time."

"Huh," Ron said, "Why would you want to do anything the muggle way anyway?"

Hermione not so subtly put her hand on Draco's arm, but before either of the Malfoys could respond, Harry answered the red-head's question, having taken no apparent offense to the remark. "I think it's harder, personally," he said, "and therefore more interesting. One of my guardians would take me out sometimes when we were on the Continent, while my other guardian was elsewhere."

Hermione noted that he had both avoided naming his guardians, and had not revealed to Ron the same fact he'd revealed to her and her brother so easily. Interesting, had Harry's guardians spoken with the same mistrust about Mrs. Weasley as Hermione's parents? He'd mentioned living on the run, did he know more about the history of the Malfoys then he let on? And, to Hermione's surprise, it appeared, from how the conversation between Ron and Harry was progressing, that Ron had been asking his question entirely in good faith.

"You lived on the Continent?" Ron was asking Harry, who nodded.

"Yeah," he said, "though not for long."

"What were you doing there?" Ron asked.

Harry shrugged, "One of my guardians is a curse-breaker of sorts, so he went where he was asked to go."

"Really? My brother Bill's one too, do you think they've ever worked together?" Ron asked, still apparently not noticing that Harry had yet to name either of these guardians he kept referring to.

"I don't know," Harry said carefully. Draco was listening to the two of them speak with rapt attention, any offense at Ron's original, possibly sort of offensive comment apparently now forgotten. Hermione knew he was probably hoping that somehow this conversation would turn into one on the actual topic of curse-breaking, instead of just curse-breakers as people one knew, something she knew her older brother found fascinating.

"Bill works for the branch of Gringotts in Egypt, he brings us back artifacts sometimes. Mom hates them, but Dad lets them keep them in his room, even if it does mean Fred and George experiment on them sometimes," Ron said. He didn't sound as enthusiastic and Hermione would have expected, which was interesting.

"Cool," Harry said, "but my guardian didn't really work for Gringotts, I don't think."

"Huh," Ron said, and the two of them lapsed into silence. Ron yawned, reminding Hermione that they had all been up for a while, considering it was night now and they had arrived at King's Cross somewhere in the early afternoon. She yawned too, stretching her shoulders a bit in the motion, and Harry and Draco both followed suit, Draco remembering to actually put a hand over his mouth.

"Do you know when we're going to get out of this cave?" Hermione wondered out loud a few moments later. As she was saying it, the lantern-man, who Hermione realized was all the way at the back of the fleet of the little boats, guiding them, bellowed, "It should be coming up in front of us just about... now!" as the dark, relatively low-hanging ceiling of the cave suddenly gave way to a vast, starry night sky.

They appeared to be half way across the lake by this point, and as they were now outside, the light from the stars was reflected in millions of tiny pinpricks of swirling light on the dark surface of the water. In the direction the boats were heading, a large castle, bigger than anything Hermione had ever seen, loomed into vision. "Whoa," she heard Harry say, "that's Hogwarts, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Ron breathed, "that's really cool."

As they approached the castle, it grew slowly but steadily larger in Hermione's vision. As they approached, she began to differentiate the various towers, the yellow lights in the windows, the same kind of almost haphazardness that characterized so much of the really strange wizarding architecture Hermione knew. It reminded her almost of the oldest part of Malfoy Manor, a huge, maze-like place that she and Draco had explored relentlessly as they'd grown up. But unlike that wing of the Manor, which was small compared to the relatively newer parts, Hogwarts appeared to be entirely made up of that terrifying, definitely magic, perhaps even sort of alive, sort of stone, that even from out here on a tiny sailboat on the Black Lake seemed to imply age.

"Do you think they have spells that induce strange philosophical thoughts?" Draco asked suddenly, and Hermione laughed.

"I don't know!" she answered, "but it's like that old part of the Manor."

"Yeah," Draco said.

"It's so... wow," Ron said, and Hermione grinned at him.

"How eloquent," she said, and she saw him roll his eyes at her in the near-dark.  
"It's so big," Harry said, and Hermione realized there wasn't much wonder in his voice. "I wonder how many places there are to hide in there?"

(L/N)

The fleet eventually reached the other shore of the Black Lake, and they all disembarked with minimal splashing. Hermione led the four of them towards the front of the group, stopping short when she noticed the woman in green robes standing on the impressive marble steps leading up to a huge set of double doors.

It wasn't as though the woman was more physically imposing than average, in fact she was shorter than Hermione's mother, but she had a presence that just by her being there, glowering at them with an air of vague disappointment that made all of the first years quiet down from the excited babbling of a multitude to the occasional whisper or elbowed aside.

"Welcome," the woman said, "I am Professor McGonagall. Please, follow me." With that, she turned, and Hermione, Draco, and the two children she hoped were now her friends followed the rest of the first years away from the shore and the lantern-man, and up the steps, all following behind the woman in green at a respectful, terrified distance.

The doors opened, and Professor McGonagall led the first years down a hall even grander than the Great Room at the Manor. Hermione looked around, taking in just how big everything was, even bigger than she'd imagined. She turned to look at Ron, who was looking both awed and terrified, his eyes darting around as though he were attempting to take in the entire room at once. "Are you okay?" she asked him, and he nodded.

"It's just so big," he said. "I don't think I've ever been in a room this big outside dad's work."

Before she could reply, she realized that Professor McGonagall had not stopped walking upon entering the hall, instead continuing on to a normal sized door. "You must wait here until I return to bring you to be sorted," she said, her voice carrying over the group of students, but not by magic. They all filed through the door, in a much much more orderly manner than Hermione expected herself and her fellow eleven year olds to be able to do, into a small, windowless side room, though the ceilings there were just as ludicrously high as the ones in the hall. The Professor, having determined everyone she expected to be among the crowd of new students was there, left the room through the same door.

Hermione, Ron, Harry and Draco stood in silence along with the other to-be-sorted students, as a nervous anticipation, which occasionally felt as though it were about to tilt into proper panic, filled Hermione. For once she could not think of much to say, and neither could the three boys, it seemed.

"Has anyone seen my toad?" she heard suddenly. A mouse-haired, proud looking boy was shoving his way through the crowd of students. "I seem to have lost my toad, did anyone take Trevor?"

Hermione assumed Trevor was the toad, which, she decided, was an incredibly stupid name to give an animal. Obviously, Hermione had named her owl Archimedes, because that was a properly interesting name for an animal. Well, she supposed, a toad was less interesting than an owl, but still.

She originally intended to ignore the boy hunting for his lost pet, but the boy shoved his way through to Draco and Hermione and shouted, "You took him, didn't you?" to Draco, getting up in his face.

"Why would I want to take your toad, and shouldn't you have left him with your things on the train?" Draco asked, and the boy sneered at him.

"You wouldn't understand," he said, "Trevor is my _familiar_."

Harry, standing behind the boy, appeared to be going through convulsions. Hermione tried to express concern with her expression, and she apparently succeeded because Harry coughed, and gave her a thumbs up. He was grinning. He must have been stifling laughter. Ron muttered something to Harry, and Harry grinned and whispered something back.

Draco also appeared to understand what was so funny about the boy's comment, but he replied as though what he'd said was in fact incredibly serious. "Why would I have him then?" he asked, feigning ignorance.

The boy glared, "Because you want my power, obviously," he said.

Harry was laughing again, not succeeding as well at being silent now and yet still the boy didn't notice.

This also made Draco genuinely upset. "Why would I want to take your... power?" he asked tonelessly, to Hermione obviously trying not to shout, something which the boy appeared to not notice at all.

Surprised, the boy seemed to deflate. Apparently he'd assumed Draco knew who he was. "I'm Neville Longbottom!" he said.

"Oh- right," Draco said, and a few moments later Hermione realized why the name seemed familiar. "Your parents are why my Uncle and Aunt can't visit anymore."

"You're related to the Lestranges?" Neville said, suddenly shoving himself closer to Draco. "You're related to... _them_?"

"Yes," Draco said. "And I know for certain they've done absolutely none of what you say they have."

Neville looked about to try and claw at Draco, or something equally violent, when a short, Irish boy Hermione vaguely remembered seeing as she and Draco had been walking through the train said, "Look!" and pointed up. Neville turned away from Draco to follow where the boy was pointing.

Two see-through figures had just floated into the room through the far wall, several feet above their heads. Theyse figure consisted of an overdressed man and a man in a simple Friar's robe. They were engaged in a very animated discussion. Their voices echoed strangely. "-twins have made him even more unbearable than he was before!" the overdressed man was saying.

"We cannot just drive him from the castle, Nicholas," the monk said in reply. "There are no other places that would take him in."

"With good reason!" The overdressed man, Nicholas, apparently, exclaimed, obviously frustrated with the monk. Before Hermione could hear any more of what they were saying, they passed through the other wall, disappearing.

Neville turned back to Draco, "We're not done," he said, and stalked off to presumably rejoin his friends.

Harry finally lost control of the laughter he was holding in, and he leaned heavily against Ron as he giggled. "I'm sorry," he said, after regaining some of his composure. "He was just so wrong, and then those ghosts scared him so much."

"You can't lose familiars," Draco said, grinning, "and there haven't been familiar-bonded wizards on the isles in years," he added. "Uncle Rodolphus told us about them one time, I think you might have been working on the Contraption though."

"I think I know who he was," Ron said, suddenly. "Mom used to talk about how You-Know-Who was defeated by a kid, or maybe- I dunno, honestly, the story was sort of fuzzy by the time it got to us."

This created more questions for Hermione than it answered. She wanted to ask Ron questions. She hadn't heard anyone refer to You-Know-Who since that weird auror had cornered her, soon after her sixth birthday. Her father had been furious when he'd found out, and then he'd just been sad as she described the questions the auror had asked. She still wasn't sure why.

Before she could ask, however, the door opened and Professor McGonagall strode in. "It's time for the sorting," she said, "please follow me."

(L/N)

 _AN: That's the chapter! For the next one I need to write the Hat's Song which (confession time) I haven't actually figured out yet. Oops :V. Also, I have chosen not to write Hagrid's dialect, because I'm not very good at it and don't want to screw it up. Thank you so much for reading and, as per usual with these author's notes, please review!_

 _/INITIATING SHAMELESS FRIEND PLUG_

 _CuChulainn X19 is a fanfic author who is very good. I realize this is a HP fic and they have so far only written RWBY stuff but no matter! They're a good writer so you should, if you're in the appropriate fandom, go and read their stuff._

 _/END SHAMELESS FRIEND PLUG._


	4. A Beginning

_AN: Sorry for the long wait. School is winding down, so I haven't had as much time to write as I usually do. Go over to my AO3 if you want to see any of the RWBY stuff I've posted, I may crosspost it here eventually._

(L/N)

At Professor McGonagall's words, Hermione and the rest of the students all filed out through the door after her. "How did you know about the trolls?" Ron asked, sounding worried. In the anticipation for her sorting, Hermione pushed aside her questions for Ron, instead internally debating pretending she knew that the sort in fact consisted of fighting armed trolls, or admitting where she'd heard of it.

She chose the second option. "I overheard you telling your mom that's what... your brothers, I believe, said, in Diagon Alley. I remembered you."

"That was your mom?" Ron said, "she was scary."

Hermione grinned, "She does not like your mother," she said. "Though you seem interesting."

Ron grinned back at her. "Thanks," he said. "So the sorting isn't trolls?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so, no."

Professor McGonagall stopped in front of a second set of monstrous double doors. These opened with an unnatural silence. The first thing Hermione noticed about the Great Hall was the noise from the combined voices of the entire student body. The volume of conversation diminished greatly as she strode into the hall, moving to stand next to a small stool. The stool had something on it, which Hermione quickly realized it was an ancient, tattered pointed hat, propped on the stool.

"Please line up, I will call you. You will put the hat on, be sorted, and replace it on the bench."

As Hermione and her soon to be classmates lined up, the hat, to her surprise, moved. It straightened, and a crack along its brim opened.

"What is it doing?" Draco asked her. He was right in front of her in line.

"I don't know," Hermione answered, equally confused.

The hat began to sing, and Hermione listened in rapt attention.

 _Much time has passed since wars were won,_

 _And the children of those who fought_

 _Do wait, as they have always done,_

 _To shelter in the ancient walls of Hogwarts._

 _What place where I put these young?_

 _What path ought I now set them on?_

 _I hold within a shouted elder's name,_

 _The power to help or ruin lives._

 _Shall they go to Gryffindor,_

 _The lions, griffons, brave and strong,_

 _Who chose to fight, instead of ponder,_

 _Who've won with courage many wars._

 _Perhaps they'll go to Ravenclaw,_

 _The ravens wise, who value truth,_

 _Who think upon the world we have,_

 _Who seek for knowledge born of proof._

 _Then of course there's Hufflepuff,_

 _You mock them so, but they are strong,_

 _They know the risks of loyalty,_

 _And yet keep faith to what is right._

 _And last of all, the Slytherins,_

 _The snakes who you will claim all lie,_

 _But who I say are more than wise,_

 _With strong ambition guiding them._

 _It is my place to choose your fates,_

 _To make or break new friendships born._

 _I will now give you labels not meant to last a life,_

 _But which could divide you all forever._

The hat closed its mouth, and Hermione chanced to glance up at the High Table. She recognized Albus Dumbledore from his chocolate frog card, and for a moment he appeared much less benevolent than his picture. Then, that emotion passed, and he smiled beneficently down at the students. He did not appear to notice her.

Sitting next to him on one side was a pale, nervous-looking man in a ludicrous purple turban. On the other side of the Headmaster was an equally pale, but not at all nervous man whose age Hermione could not tell. He had greasy-looking dark hair and a thin, pinched face, and his eyes looked more like little holes in his face than proper eyes.

Hermione's focus snapped back to Professor McGonagall when the woman began listing off students. She called a girl named Hannah Abbott first, who was put almost immediately into Hufflepuff. That table cheered uproariously while the Gryffindor table jeered. Soon after, Harry was called up, and the house placed him into Ravenclaw, a house which showed its approval with much more subdued clapping.

Draco and Hermione looked at each other nervously as McGonagall made her way down the list. Sometimes the hat would take only seconds to choose, other times it would take what felt like hours to Hermione before it shouted a name out into the hall. She still had no idea how she would be chosen, and the song it had sung was much grimmer than she had expected.

McGonagall got to "L" and Neville was called. The boy sauntered to the chair and placed the hat on his head. The brim had barely touched his head when it called "GRYFFINDOR!" to the loud cheers of everyone at that table.

Draco was called immediately after, and Hermione heard the occasional whispers as to her surprise, older students, at the Gryffindor and Slytherin tables especially, openly stared at her brother. Draco stayed under the hat for a very long time, before it finally called "Better be RAVENCLAW!" to the apparent surprise of the Slytherin table.

Hermione was called up next, and she slowly walked to the stool, picked the hat up and put it on. It fell down over her eyes.

A little voice in her head whispered, " _Oh- interesting, I would have declared you Gryffindor once_."

"Once?" Hermione thought, wondering if it would respond.

" _Oh, yes, once. But much has changed, since I was made,"_ it said, " _where would you like to go?"_

Hermione floundered, trying to think of the brief descriptions that it had given in its song. "I don't know," she eventually admitted, "you haven't told me enough for me to answer."

She got in response what she could best describe as the mental equivalent of a smile. " _Well, then, my dear, the answer is simple, you had_ better be RAVENCLAW!"

It yelled the last three words to the entire hall, and she pulled it off her head, deposited it on the stool and immediately went over and sat down next to Draco at the appropriate table. "That was not at all what I expected. I wonder why mom and dad didn't tell us about that?" she asked Draco, talking louder than she usually would so she could be heard over the hundreds of conversations going on around her.

He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Perhaps it's some sort of tradition to hide the nature of the sorting?" he proposed. Harry, who was sitting across from the two of them, nodded.

"My guardian was making up all these mad stories about what would happen," he said, "and my other guardian told him to hush and said that it was something simple, but I musn't tell the other first years." He shrugged. "I'm just glad we've been placed in the same house. I hope Ron is put here, he seems nice."

"Yeah," Hermione said, grinning, and Draco smirked at her. She glared at him, and mimed throwing something.

Professor McGonagall finally reached the "W"s, and as they waited for Ron's sorting, Hermione pondered what Draco meant. It wasn't important, not really, but it was still interesting to think about, especially why he might assume something like that. "RAVENCLAW!" the Hat called, and Ron ran to join that at the table as two identical older students, equally red haired as Ron, jeered from over at the Gryffindor table.

"Those are George and Fred," he said to Harry, "they're my brother."

"Did your family expect you to be in Gryffindor?" Hermione asked, and Ron nodded, looking worriedly over at the table.

He stared anxiously down at his plate, which was still empty as there was no sign of food, and said, "I told it all my family had been in Gryffindor, and it said to me that that didn't matter, that I should go here. It really did not sound happy."

"Well Ravenclaw seems like a good house," Hermione said. Three long haired boys were having an enthusiastic but subdued conversation about what she assumed to be some kind of muggle television programme, and the table, when the students weren't all cheering for whoever was being sorted, was much quieter than the other three tables seemed to be.

It was nice.

"Yes," Ron said, "so I'm not upset to be here." He grinned, and Hermione grinned back.

There was a hush, as the Headmaster drew attention to himself by conjuring a flash from his wand. "Good evening!" he said, managing to project his voice to the entire Great Hall without appearing to use any sort of spellwork. "Before we begin our meal, may I just make a few announcements. This year, the classroom off the third-floor corridor is off limits- any student who questions that," he looked pointedly in the direction of the Gryffindor table, "will be entirely to blame for whatever hurt he or she may encounter. I would also like to remind you all that the Forbidden Forest is, in fact, forbidding and dark, and therefore no student should not be there except for under staff supervision. Is that understood?" Some noises of assent from around the hall, and some laughter, again from the Gryffindor table. "Good. Now, some personal remarks! Nitwit, blubber, oddment and tweak!"

For the third time, some of the students at the Gryffindor table burst into raucous laughter, as Hermione looked at her three friends in confusion. "Do you know what that's about?" she asked. None of them seemed to have any more of a clue than she did.

"Ah!" Harry said, suddenly, bringing his hand up to his forehead. "That hurt!"

"What?" Hermione asked, concerned.  
Harry rubbed at his forehead. "I dunno, something just hurt, here, right here," he moved his hand away to show her what looked to Hermione to be normal, unhurt skin.

"Weird," Ron said.

Just then, Hermione noticed that the serving plates, which had been sitting empty, had filled with food, presumably by magic. She assumed it had been cooked elsewhere and apparated to the plates, somehow, but she was not sure exactly how that kind of magic would work. She knew it could not have been summoned- food could not be, for some bizarre reason.

Deciding to focus on actually eating instead of trying to figure out why she could, she grabbed some of the roast, some potatoes, and no vegetables, and began to eat. She noted that Ron had piled his plate high, while Draco and Harry had taken about as much food as she had.

"Are you sure you can eat all that?" Hermione asked Ron. He nodded happily around what was presumably mashed potatoes. "Okay," she said, and she began to eat her own food.

It was, unsurprisingly considering where she was, very good. She focused on eating for a while, which was easy since no one around her seemed interested in conversation for the moment, either.

As she was eating, a girl she hadn't noticed, who was sitting a few seats down from her, turned to Hermione and said, "The Nargles seem to have taken a liking to you!" brightly, around the backs of the two people between her and Hermione.

"I'm not sure what that means, exactly," Hermione said in reply, "but thank you?"

The girl shrugged. "Hello," she said, "my name is Luna Lovegood." The two people between them continued to ignore the strange girl lean behind them.

Hermione recognized the name from the sorting, "Oh, you were sorted into Ravenclaw just after me!" she said, and the girl nodded, smiling. Without another word, Luna went back to eating and perusing a magazine she was holding upside down. As she was doing so, Hermione noticed that she had tiny heads of lettuce for earrings. _Cute_ , she thought, before going back herself to the very important task of eating.

The majority of the rest of the meal went by normally- Hermione was tired, but conversation with her new friends, Draco, and the occasional other housemate who would pop into conversation as dinner went on caused it to pass by in that sort of rapid pleasantness that occurs when generally positive events are occurring.

The only oddity was a second pain Harry felt in his forehead. This one was much easier to track to a specific source- or a more specific source than "the vague direction of the High Table." On the other side of Professor Dumbledore there was a sallow skinned man of indeterminate age, with dark, greasy hair and black eyes that didn't look entirely human. "That's Snape," Ron whispered when Harry pointed him out, "or at least he matches the description my brothers gave me. He's apparently really hard on Gryffindors," he added, almost as an afterthought, before grinning. "Well, I suppose that's one good part to me not being a Gryffindor, then," he said, sounding a little less nervous about than he had immediately after his sorting.

"Could the pain have come from him?" Harry asked, looking at him, and then at the nervous looking young man in a purple turban, "or him?"

"Severus? Curse someone?" Draco asked, sounding surprised. Hermione grinned at the odd looks on Ron and Harry's faces. "He's father's friend, I can't imagine him cursing anyone he knows I'm friendly with," he explained, and Hermione nodded in confirmation. "He looks very different here than when he visits."

That would explain why Hermione hadn't recognized him until Ron named him. As she considered the oddity of what Harry was experiencing, she wondered if perhaps the pain came not from either men sitting next to the Headmaster, but perhaps- she squashed that thought. She did not trust the Headmaster's smile, which was too fixed, nor his eyes, which twinkled too much.

"So he's a professor here?" Hermione asked, and Ron nodded.

"He teaches potions."

"Huh."

As the four of them were looking up at the High Table, the Headmaster, and soon after the rest of the adults sitting at the table, stood up.

This acted a cue for the prefect to also rise, and Hermione assumed this meant it was time to leave. She didn't mind, really, she'd finished her food and dessert some time ago, and she suddenly found herself rather tired. It had been rather a long day, and she had a long day of classes ahead of her. (She assumed they would get their schedules in the morning- or at least, she hoped so, it would be confusing and potentially distressing to have to navigate classes without one).

She, Draco, Ron and Harry followed the two Ravenclaw prefects, a boy and a girl whose names Hermione did not know, along with the rest of the Ravenclaw first years, down a series of winding halls that only led vaguely in an upwards direction.

"I actually don't know anything about Ravenclaw tower," Harry said, "both my guardians were Gryffindors." Hermione nodded. That made sense.

Finally, they reached an almost hidden door. The first years crowded around it, and the female prefect walked up to it and knocked with the raven-headed doorknocker twice. "What is your goal here?" it asked.

"To learn, and grow less unwise," the prefect answered.

"Good enough," the knocker replied.

The door opened, and as a unit the first years, the two prefects and whatever older students had followed the group from the Great Hall went through it into the common room. The room was large, obviously taking up the entire lowest floor of Ravenclaw tower, hung in blue and orange color. It was dotted with comfortable looking chairs and neat wooden tables, with tall, overflowing bookshelves dominating the walls except for right near a large fireplace which appeared to give all non directly magical light and heat for the room, and, considering how the chimney appeared to be designed and the ingenuity of magic in places as old as this, probably heated much of the rest of the tower, too.

Two tall staircases led to what Hermione assumed were the girls and boys dormitories. "I'd suggest you all go up to your rooms, first," the girl prefect said, "to make sure your things are there and to get unpacked. If you aren't knackered by the time you're through, feel free to come back downstairs. Curfew soon, but that's only really applies to being outside the tower."

Hermione sighed. "I guess this means I'll be in a different dorm than you," she said to Draco. He nodded sadly. On impulse, she hugged him, squeezing him a bit tighter than she normally would.

"Oh, come on, you'll be seeing me tomorrow," he said, only mock irritated. Hermione grinned, and broke the hug.

"See you tomorrow," she said. She joined some other first years girls as they all went up the stairs to the girls' dorms. She was looking forward to sleeping.

(L/N)

 _AN: Please review! I'd write longer writer's notes but there isn't really much for me to say. Uh- in response to that the comment, I'm not going to do Dramione, probably, but honestly I have no idea what pairings i'm going with for now._


	5. Morning Conversation

Draco woke up frowning. Not from any dream, really, he hadn't dreamed all that much since he was very small, but just from a general sense of unease. Not that there was anything wrong with either his room or his dormmates. Other than Ron and Harry there were nine other boys in his year, and they all seemed nice and interesting enough. He had not talked to them much at the opening feast and had not been able to remember their names all that well, which he would have to rectify. Their dorm was fine, and older, more utilitarian version of his room back home. There was twelve beds, each with curtains for privacy and a trunk at the foot of it, each with identical bedside tables that some of his dormmates had already begun to personalize already.

No, this place was fine. The unease then must be coming from (and this was somewhat embarrassing) the fact that this was the first night he had slept somewhere where Hermione was not easily accessible to him. Trying to push this out of his mind, he got up and began a modified for necessity version of his morning rituals. He gathered his toothbrush and toothpaste, as well as a his robes and cloak and underclothes, and went to the bathroom to begin the process of preparing for the day.

The other boys in his dorm were doing the same, but the bathrooms, same as the rooms first had, gave the impression of having been built for many more people than there were, though of course being magical there were still exactly the right number of sinks and showers and privacy stalls, depending on who needed or wanted what to use.

Ron, who had apparently slept a little late, rushed into the bathroom already wearing a set of muggle clothes which he, Draco assumed, would be wearing underneath his robes. "Morning," he muttered sleepily, and Draco nodded at him, before going back to the rooms to grab his hat.

It was strange, he thought, the requirement of a pointed hat. He gazed at it suspiciously, aware that it was traditional but also aware that his first class this morning was Double Potions with the Hufflepuffs, something which was both exciting, because it was potions and presumably with Uncle Severus, but also somewhat anxiety inducing, because he was unsure of how well a class with Hufflepuffs would go. Not that he wanted to allow himself to fall into easy stereotypes of his classmates, but even though his father and mother hadn't spoken of the houses much, or Hogwarts at all, really, his uncles had never spoken of the Hufflepuffs or the Gryffindors with all that much good favor. But anyway, the important part was that he had potions, and the thought of wearing a hat to class was strange, really.

"I don't think we need to wear them around school generally," he heard someone say, bemused. Draco started, put the hat down as he picked up his bag full of quills and parchment and some extra coins and turned to look at the speaker, a tall boy with longish brown hair and thick, square glasses. He was wearing gloves that looked almost like dragon skin. He appeared nervous and almost a little surprised at his own voice, and he was wringing his hands together. His accent was strange, not exactly Irish, but not exactly like anything Draco had ever heard before either. "I'm Septimus," he said, "sorry, I just remember thinking the same thing before my brother explained it to me while we were on our way here."

Draco looked at him, trying to figure out something. "Are you a seventh son?" he asked, because he couldn't think of anything else to say and he was trying to cover for his own embarrassment at making that kind of misunderstanding of the instructions. He wondered if he should have asked Harry to clarify that assumption last night, when they had been talking in the boat.

Septimus looked confused for a few seconds, "I'm not sure- oh! No, my parents just liked the name, I believe. My brother's name is Dorian."

"Worrying."

"Yes. Anyway, I'm sorry."

Draco realized suddenly why Septimus was a little more familiar than just "person he'd seen last night at sorting."

"I think I saw you talking with your brother," he said, "that's why I remember you, I noticed you at the table."

"Huh. Do you not generally notice people?"

Harry walked back into the dorm. "We should probably go to breakfast soon," he declared at Draco, somehow fully awake. He moved past the two talking boys to go rummage in his trunk. He must have been looking for socks, as he was still barefoot despite being otherwise fully dressed.

"I generally focus on people I already know," Draco explained, trying to decide whether or not he should smile at his own words.

"Fair." Septimus smiled at him, making Draco feel comfortable enough to smile back.

Ron, now fully dressed, wandered into the dorm after Harry. "I'm going to go eat," he said matter of factly, apparently either too tired or too hungry or both to be anything more than utterly disinterested in any potential serious conversations going on around him (not that there were any at this point.)

Draco nodded. "I should go to. Would you like to sit with us?" he asked Septimus on a strange impulse. The taller boy gave a tiny shoulder shrug and shook his head.

"Sorry, I usually sit with Dorian for breakfast. See you in class, though, and we'll still be at the same table."

Septimus hurried off, leaving a bemused Draco to watch him. "Pearse!" he said, suddenly, resisting the urge to hit himself in the forehead. That's where Draco had recognized him from, not at dinner later though he would have of course seen him at the table. He'd been sorted a little before Harry.

"What?" Harry was done gathering his last few things and came to stand next to Draco.

Draco shook his head. "Nothing," he said, "we should go to breakfast."

Breakfast was what Draco would call relatively simple, but he also knew that his definition of simple was different than people who were not wealthy upper nobility by birth. This was shown very must by how Ron looked at the food with the same kind of awed wonder Draco had noticed the night before, though this time it was to a somewhat lesser extent.

Draco noticed Septimus talking with an older student whom he assumed was Dorian. "Was that a Pearse?" he heard, and he turned, realizing Ron had taken a break from eating to talk to him.

"Yes." Ron looked at him significantly as he replied, "what?"

"They're a really old Ravenclaw family, or something," Ron said, "'M just surprised he'd talk to you, considering how a lot of people think of your da."

Draco winced, which he covered with a mock scoff. "Are you calling one of your housemates stupid, Ron?"

The other boy shrugged. "Just goes to show that my mother wasn't always correct about these things." A nervous smile, and a glance over towards the Gryffindor table, "I really hope I don't encounter Fred and George soon," he finally whispered, leaning across the table to try and make it more secretive. "They didn't seem too pleased with me being sorted here."

"Why not?" Draco asked. He could tell it was an ignorant question, but he wanted to know. He had no frame of reference for siblings, almost none of the children of his parents' friends had siblings either, and he was curious what it was like.

"Because House is important to my family, I guess." Ron looked over at the Gryffindor table again. One of the twins took that as an opportunity to jeer in what might have been a good natured manner. "Hasn't been a non-Gryffindor in my family tree since the founders, and all that."

"That's physically impossible," Hermione from her place a few seats down, looking at Ron intently. "Unless your ancestors murdered all deviants in their line, or something."

"I know expunging is something that happens quite a lot in pure-blood lines," Draco pointed out, at which Hermione nodded. "Our parents won't talk about it, but I think father has a cousin who was cast out?"

"We do too!" Ron said with maybe a little too much enthusiasm for the topic. Hermione looked at him skeptically. "Well, we do, though I guess that's not ideal." He looked over at the Gryffindor table again. "Also, I dunno if I'm brainy enough for Ravenclaw." He shrugged. "I'm mostly just good at chess."

Oh! This made Ron about a hundred times more interesting to Draco. He and Hermione knew each other's playing styles too well, so having someone else to play with would be awesome. Draco found himself attempting to predict what sort of piece commander Ron would be, just from how he was talking, despite himself.

Hermione grinned at him, as though she could see the metaphorical cogs spinning in his head. "It seems like the perfect fit for me at least," she said, "Draco can confirm that I always want to know far too much."

This broke Draco out of his thoughts, and he laughed. "Yes, it's sometimes rather terrifying."

"Do you know where Harry is?" Ron asked after a few minutes of quiet eating. "Did he say he was going to be late?"

"Oh- no, he didn't," Hermione said.

Looking over at the Head Table, Draco realized that the Headmaster's seat was empty, and Severus Snape was looking decidedly nervous.

(L/N)

 _Update, finally! Sorry for the long wait, I've been having trouble writing on my longfics recently. Have a few one-offs I posted over on AO3 I'll drag over to here eventually, too._

 _Here we introduce some OCs, who I've created a) for the purpose of rounding out Ravenclaw House and b) because OCs are fun as long as they aren't too OP and story breaky._

 _Short update, because I feel like this is a good place to cut the chapter off._


	6. Confrontations

_AN: well if it hasn't been a small eternity. Here, after much stressing and uncertainty about how to write Severus Snape, is chapter six, Confrontations.  
Honestly he was difficult to write because he's the least easy alignment wise? So I'm going with on the side of the death eaters, but still a double agent, sort of. Also if there is romantic tension between him and lupin that was mostly unintentional, they just cannot be in a room together without bickering ALL THE TIME.  
Warning for references to child abuse? Sort of? Also adults making terrible decisions but that's unfortunately par for the course in terms of harry potter.  
_

* * *

Harry did his best not to look nervous as Professor Dumbledore led him into an antechamber off the Great Hall he hadn't noticed. "Professor," he said, "have I done anything wrong?" He suppressed a look back at the door leading back out of the room.

He wracked his brain trying to think of what he could have possibly done. He'd been at school for not even a day, and already the Headmaster was asking to speak with him. This couldn't be good, but there was nothing he'd done since he got on the Hogwarts Express that could explain this kind of meeting.

There were students who'd been caught sneaking around after curfew from Gryffindor House, apparently, but Harry had just gone to bed and fallen asleep seconds after. A few weird dreams, sure, but he doubted dreaming about green light was the kind of thing that could lead to talkings-to by the Headmaster of the school himself.

"My dear boy," the Headmaster said, with that sort of odd-sweet voice Harry associated with the portraits at Grimmauld place, "have you?"

"No," Harry said with a confidence he did not feel. He did not say "I haven't had the time to."

"Good," the Headmaster said. "I have noticed that you have made friends with the Malfoy children." There was something about the concern in his voice that made Harry nervous, as though the old man were trying to imply something wrong about his friends just by asking about them.

"Yes," Harry said. "We were in the same compartment on the train."

It might have been just Harry's imagination, but for a moment he noticed an almost pained look flit across the Headmaster's face.

"I understand that you have been fairly isolated from the effects of your fame," the Headmaster said with grandfatherly geniality, "but you must understand that not everyone who would be your friend does so solely for that friendship's sake."

Harry realized with a start that either the Headmaster was completely unaware of anything that had happened to him while he was traveling with his godfather, or the professor was trying to pull one over him. "Sir," he said, attempting to hide his confusion behind his best attempt at politeness, "perhaps I will find other friends in my classes."

That was probably diplomatic.

"I do hope so, my dear boy," the Headmaster said. He sounded almost sad. "You may go."

Harry tried flattening his hair against his head. He was unsuccessful. "Alright, sir," he said.

He left the alcove and walked over to the Ravenclaw table, ignoring the curious looks from the Slytherins he passed by.

"Harry!"

Ron nearly lunged out of his seat, almost bowling over the third year sitting next to him. He ran the short distance between Harry and the table and stopped, awkwardly, just before he ran into him.

"Hey Ron," Harry said.

Ron sat back down at the table, this time apologizing to the third year. Harry sat across from him, next to Draco.

"Where were you?" Hermione asked with obvious concerned. She and Draco shared a worried look.

"The Headmaster wanted to talk to me," Harry said. "He tried to warn me about you, I think," he said, looking at Hermione and Draco. He shook his head, trying to clear it. "It was strange."

"About us?" Hermione asked. "Oh- it must have been," she sighed and looked down at her hands. "Of course," she said. "He must think you don't know."

"He assumed a lot of things," Harry said. "He talked to me like I was a little kid." He stared vaguely in the direction of Hermione's face, trying to set words to his thoughts. "It was as though- there was a script, maybe? Of how I should have come here."

"The Headmaster is really old," Ron said. Harry stared at him, unsure of what he meant. Ron shrugged awkwardly. "I just mean," he said, "that since he's really old he probably expects events to go a certain way? My older relatives are like that sometimes." He shuddered dramatically, as though picturing one of those relatives.

"I guess?" Harry looked down at his plate, and realized he hadn't eaten all that much. He started half-heartedly on some sausage. "He said I could have been 'isolated from my fame'," he said, using finger quotes. "Sure, I wasn't hounded, or anything, and it's not like here, but I still encountered people who grateful to me for something I don't remember doing." It hadn't been so bad at Hogwarts, but it was more than he was used to. And the praise came from a decidedly different set of opinions.

"Did you really kill the Dark Lord?" Ron asked. Harry noticed the discomfort of both Hermione and Draco at the title. "You have the scar, don't you?" Harry unconsciously tugged his bangs over his forehead. He let his hair grow long for exactly this reason.  
"I don't really know," Harry said. "My godfather always told me that something rebounded back on him, but neither he nor Remus liked to talk about my parents." The topic always had the feel of an open wound to it.

"My mum used to talk about you and your parents all the time," Ron said. He looked decidedly awkward about admitting it. "I didn't bring it up before because it's a weird thing to say, but yeah, she'd talk about them. Called your parents 'two of our best.' No idea what she could've been referring to."  
"That's... definitely odd," Harry said. It didn't quite best he time a man came up to him and bowed elaborately and with terrifying vigor for a good minute and a half.

"Used to?" Draco asked, almost at the same time as Hermione said, "That's oddly obsessed of her."

"About five years ago she just... stopped. Completely. Never brought you up again. Brought up your dad a few times, your mum even fewer times, but you? Never."

"Oh," Harry said. He wracked his brain, trying to remember any significant events from when he was six. He couldn't find anything.

There was a shift in the room, as students around them started getting up. The remaining food on the plates vanished. Breakfast was over, and it was time to get to class. It had come more quickly than Harry expected.

His, and Ron's and Hermione's and Draco's and the boy who Harry thought Draco had called Septimus's final class was Double Potions with the Hufflepuffs.

Ron had looked at his schedule the night before with a look of horror. Hermione and Draco, on the other hand, seemed more pleased than anything else.

Harry was mostly just extremely curious. Neither Sirius nor Remus were terribly interested in Potions, so it was one aspect of the wider magical world Harry had never had much exposure to.

Potions was in the dungeons, near where Harry assumed the Slytherin Common Room was. The classroom was cold, and had a look of strictly regimented chaos to it. There was a stack of spare cauldrons in the corner nearest the door. Harry and Ron partnered immediately. "We should use your cauldron," Ron said, looking at his second-hand one dubiously. "I think this one has a hole somewhere."

Severus Snape looked as though he had deliberately copied the worst associations muggles had with magic.

"This is potentially the most dangerous class you will take at this school," he said without preamble, "and also, potentially, the most important. Here you will learn magic which cannot be easily replicated by wand-work alone. But," and he sighed in an exasperated manner, as though he had already given up on the class, "most of you will probably only barely scrape by. I ask only a bare minimum of competence, and yet so few students ever grasp what this class is meant to teach." He looked significantly over at Hermione and Draco. He avoided Harry and Ron entirely.

The potion that first class was explained three different times: on the board, in Snape's stiff, exact handwriting, verbally, and in their textbooks. Hermione was looking intently at the textbook with occasional glances at the board. She had paired herself with Draco, who paid more attention to Snape's words and less to anything written down.

Their potion (a basic color-changing draught) was looking a lot better than what Harry and Ron were creating.

"Hey," Harry said, trying to be subtle, "how are you getting it so quickly?"

The other students in the class were struggling same as Harry and Ron, the Hufflepuffs maybe less so than the Ravenclaws. They seemed better at working with each other.

Ron and Harry looked at each other. 'This is not going to be our best class,' they seemed to say to each other.

There was one significant event that class. A girl from Hufflepuff, who reminded Harry of either a mouse or a chipmunk or both, nearly gave herself boils, which made no sense to Harry. "How is there something in a color-changer that could give you boils?" he whispered to Ron.

"Never underestimate the stupidity of children, Mr. Potter," Snape said, scowling.

"Yes, sir," Harry said hurriedly.

"For your cheek, I would like to ask you, and Miss Malfoy as well, to stay after class. I saw you both exchanging glances."

At that, Harry nearly looked over at Hermione, before realizing what that would be perceived as.

"Yes, sir," Harry said.

Ron watched Harry with wide eyes as the two of them packed their ingredients and books into their cauldrons. "You sure you'll be all right, mate?" he asked.

"I don't know," Harry said. "I don't know anything about Snape except what you told me this morning."

"Fred and George hate him," Ron said. "And he's been nasty to you all class—"

"That will be quite enough, Mr. Weasley," Snape interrupted. Neither Harry nor Ron had noticed him approach. Harry started.

"Snape!" Ron said. "I'll just be going." He mouthed something like _good luck_ to Harry as he fled Snape's dungeon classroom.

Hermione walked over to Harry. "You look nervous," she said.

"I've never been asked to stay after school before," he said. "I've never really had _teachers_ before who weren't one of my godfathers."

Further conversation was halted by Snape clearing his throat.

"Mr. Potter," he said, "Miss Malfoy. I am so, very sorry."

Harry realized Snape had his wand out.

"Severus, what are you doing?" Hermione asked. She sounded just as confused as Harry was.

"I will explain later. We are not safe here."

Harry remembered suddenly that Hermione had referred to Snape as "Uncle Severus" at breakfast.

"I promise I will have a head-ache reliever for you both when you wake up," Snape said.

"What?" Harry wanted a better explanation, but before he could ask for one, pain bloomed in his head, as though he had just been struck, and he collapsed.

Hermione woke up in the kitchen of an unfamiliar house. Her head hurt, especially around her temples and behind her eyes.

She was sitting at a beaten looking kitchen table. Harry was across from her. A haggard looking man in ragged clothes sat next to him. Standing ominously over by the cupboard was Severus. She checked under the table, she wasn't sure for what, exactly.

The haggard man gave Hermione a small flask full of neutral-smelling liquid. Harry was drinking something similar looking, so she took a sip. It tasted normal. The pain behind her eyes slowly faded.

"Harry, there's a dog under the table," she said.

He wasn't as afraid as she expected him to be. Unless he was somehow in on whatever strange plot this was, that meant she wasn't in any danger. Or at least, she was in less danger.  
She checked the pocket of her robes. She still had her wand. Good.

"These are my godfathers," he said, sheepishly. "That's Remus," he said, pointing to the ragged man, "and Sirius." He pointed at the dog. "Don't tell anyone."

"He's an animagus?"

Professor McGonagall had explained in relatively simple terms what an animagus was, after she had transformed herself into a cat in demonstration of advanced magic.

Hermione had promised to herself in that moment that she would figure out how that worked, even if she never became an animagus herself.

"Yes," Harry said.

"Don't tell anyone," the ragged man said.

"The house and its residents are _fideliused_ , Lupin," Severus said, "or have you already forgotten?"

"How would I forget, I live—" Remus stood up, furious.

The dog under the table barked sharply, interrupting them both.

"Right," Remus said. "Sorry, Sirius."

"The animagus laws are just a way of keeping track of people who could easily hide from the Ministry." Hermione said. "And I don't exactly like them." Most of her interactions with the ministry consisted of aurors who used to visit her house sometimes. She still wasn't entirely sure why they did that. It upset her parents. Maybe that was why.  
"She is just as much an agent of Dumbledore as you are, Lupin," Severus said. He looked as though he was trying to be reassuring.

Harry was staring at her, mildly impressed. She shrugged. "I just listen to mother and father talk, and I was reading _The Unabridged History of the British Isles_ over the summer." She could never describe reading that book in past tense. It was always updating itself.

"There hasn't been an accurate edition of that released in decades," Remus said.

"There are a lot of old books in our library," Hermione said. The library was one of the few rooms in her house that wasn't half empty. She wasn't about to say that part, though.

Remus nodded.

"Why did you kidnap us?" Hermione asked. She looked at Harry. "If you're Harry's godfathers, I don't understand." She also did not entirely understand why Snape was there.

Severus grimaced. "This is for my sake," he said. "Frankly, it is rather useful that you are both in the same house, despite Albus's frustration, for it means kidnapping you both sounds semi-reasonable." He looked over at Remus, who shook his head.

"I'm not doing it," he said. "I think it's too early to tell them."

Severus looked both Hermione and Harry in the eye, one after the other. "Tom has… regained sentience, in a way," he said.

"Vol—" Hermione began. Severus brought up a hand.

"Not here," he said. "We are telling you this now because you are in the most danger." He turned to Harry. "What do you know about the death of your parents?"

"Almost nothing," Harry said. He looked over at Remus. "I don't blame you for not talking about it, though."

"I still think you're too young," Remus said. "You shouldn't have to deal with this."

"They were forced into it the moment—"

Sirius barked again.

"Right." Remus scrubbed at his face with his hands.

"Harry, your parents died because of me," Severus said. He hung his head, pausing in his incessant pacing. His voice was almost gentle, which was almost just as terrifying as his earlier harshness. "Had I—had I acted _very_ differently, there is chance your parents could have lived to raise you."

Hermione watched Harry's face undergo something she didn't entirely get. "I don't understand," he said. "You knew my mom?"

"Yes." Severus looked down, away from Harry and Hermione both. "Yes, I knew her."

Remus, for the first time since Hermione had woken up, looked at Snape with something like sympathy.

"I told… I told Albus some… _information_ and he… he acted accordingly. He engineered a scenario where—you've heard the story where the death curse rebounded off you, yes?"

Harry nodded.

Hermione had also heard the story, often accompanied by skeptical comments from her parents or relatives. Harry Potter: The Boy-Who-Lived.

One of the many topics her parents had told her never to bring up around aurors. Or at least, never to bring up her parents' thoughts on all of it.

"That is true, for the most part," Severus said. "But it was not Tom's _avada kedavra_ that rebounded off you and seemingly—it was Albus's."

"Don't say it in those words!" Remus said. He went from annoyed to distressed in moments. It reminded Hermione of her mother's fear.

"He does not know this places secret—does Harry?"

"Yes."

Harry nodded.

"You do not have to tell me the secret," Hermione said, even though she was dying to know. To know the secret of a _fidelius_ charm would be fascinating. The spell on the manor was similar, but that was familial magic, and there was no real secret keeper.

She supposed Remus was the secret keeper. She decided not to say this out loud.

"We have already said so much," Remus said, somewhat bitterly, "what's the harm in putting you more at risk."

Harry looked over at Remus. His face was full of the same concern Hermione felt for her mother, sometimes. "I don't understand," he said, "why would Professor Dumbledore kill my parents?"

"That I will not tell you," Severus said. "Some knowledge ought to remain buried, at least for the moment."

Remus did not take his eyes from the table. The adults, Hermione decided, were not being terribly consistent in what they thought Hermione and Harry should know.

"Suffice it to say that there was reason to suspect you were the only one capable of destroying what most of the wizarding world considered the greatest threat to its existence since Grindelwald," Severus continued. "And this was, for the most part, proven right."

"Something of Tom's soul survived that night," Remus said, "even if your parents didn't. Dumbledore spun a story about finding you there, abandoned, and he blamed everything on 'Voldemort' and your father's friends—that is to say, Sirius and me."

"The third one too," Snape said. "You cannot forget him."

"Yes, him too." Remus sighed. "But, I do not know where he is, and I do not want to burden them more than you already have."

Severus made a small exasperated sound. "We would not have to do any of this if you had explained to your godson even a small part of it."

"He was a _child_ , Severus," Remus said. "A child I was raising on the run. With my—condition, and Sirius's legal status, we were putting enough pressures on Harry as it was."

"I'm here, you know," Harry said. Hermione was surprised he hadn't been more irritated before that moment. "And I'm eleven. I'm not a little boy anymore. Why are you just telling me this now?"

"Because you're right under Dumbledore's nose," Remus said. "You are living in his magical domain. You are not exactly under his power, but you will be watched."

"Why am I here?" Hermione asked. It could not just be convenience, or because she had begun a small friendship with Harry on the train.

"You were not born Hermione Malfoy," Severus said. Remus glared at him.

Hermione shook her head. Everything the two men had said about Dumbledore made sense, based on what her parents had told her and what she had overheard of their whispered conversations with her relatives, but this was too far. This made no sense at all. "That's not true," she said. "I'm keyed into the wards—I am a Malfoy by blood." They had brought her and Draco to the Malfoy vault, that day in Diagon Alley. She grasped that fact desperately to herself. "I could not access the vaults if I were anything but a Malfoy."

Severus blinked in surprise. "Lucius must have done the blood-change ceremony without telling any of us."

"I suppose he couldn't risk it getting back to Dumbledore in any way," Remus said. "We aren't saying the Malfoys aren't your parents, Hermione."

"That's what it sounds like," she said.

"You are originally muggleborn," Severus said. "It is… tradition… to raise such children among wizarding families. The foster families are not always willing."

"This is why I can't believe you," Hermione said. "My parents love me."

"Yes," Remus said, "we know. And we wouldn't bring you back to the couple you were born to—it's too late for that. We just—that's why you're here. Because Dumbledore will try to use you."

"Use me?" What use could she be to a powerful man?

"We don't know what Albus knows about Tom. But you, and your brother, are your parents greatest concern. Albus knows this," Severus said. "Hermione, you have known me since you are very young. Would I lie to you about something so important?"

Severus had always answered Hermione's questions best out of all of her parents' friends. To her knowledge, he had never truly lied to her. She could not say so much about even her own parents.

"Me knowing, it doesn't change anything? For them I mean," she asked.

"I do not know," Severus said. "I am sorry."

He was more like he was when Hermione was younger, now, than how he was as a teacher. Well, she hadn't known him as a teacher for at that long, but there was still a striking difference. Hermione wondered if that was because at Hogwarts, he was forever under Dumbledore's watchful gaze. She could not imagine how difficult that must be.

"What are we supposed to do now?" she asked.

"Be careful," Severus said. "You have not been gone so long. I can reasonably claim you have been scrubbing cauldrons."

Harry made a face. "Will you continue to be cruel to us in class?" he asked.

Severus sighed. "We shall see," he said. "I dearly hope I will not have to."

"Are you knocking us out again?" Hermione asked.

"Unfortunately, yes," Severus said. "I cannot yet give you the secret to this house."

Hermione frowned. "All right, then, get on it with it. I have homework." She needed time to process everything she had just learned. She needed time to decide whether she could even believe what she had just heard.

Also, Professor McGonagal had given them a rather long reading for the first day, and there was the potions homework besides. And Draco would have so many questions.

"Will you two be alright?" Remus asked.

Harry nodded.

"I don't really know," Hermione said. "Can I tell any of this to Draco?"  
Severus and Remus shared another of many glances. "If Dumbledore were to steal the information from their minds—"

"I will let them use their judgement," Severus said. He looked intently at Hermione for a moment. "I have always known that you are clever," he said. "Do what you think is best."

Hermione could not help feeling proud at his words. "Okay," she said. "Can we go back to Hogwarts now?"

As in the potions classroom, Snape pointed his wand at the two of them.

Hermione woke up in a strange bed. She opened her eyes surreptitiously. This must be the hospital wing.

"What do you _do_ to these children, Snape," a woman Hermione did not recognize was asking Severus.

"There was a potions accident," he said.

"I'm sure," the woman said. "Now shoo, _shoo_ , you utterly horrible man."

Hermione heard footsteps retreating out of the room.

* * *

 _AN: PLEASE REVIEW!_


	7. Chapter 7

_Hey everyone, I'm back! I can't promise regular updates, but they'll definitely be more frequent than ONCE A YEAR. Realizing it had been over a year (!) since my last update really kicked me in the pants to finally finish this. It's a much more complex than I expected, and I should have plotted it out better initially (thanks, past me)._

 _Also, Hermione is just too damn sensible to be a Harry Potter protagonist._

* * *

The conversation happened with less incident than Hermione feared it would, Draco watching her intently as she spoke while Ron and Draco had a similar, if marginally less fraught, conversation at the same table in the common room. Or, at least she assumed it was less fraught, because they turned to Ron catching Harry up on what the Astronomy assignment would be that night.

Hermione and Harry had been released from the Hospital Wing with a brief lecture about proper cauldron procedure from Madame Pomfray, which turned out to be the name of the woman who ran it.

"You're still my sister," Draco said, "I genuinely cannot remember you not being around."

She couldn't help but smile at that. "Thanks," she said, "that means a lot."

"And you're my blood sister, anyway—you could not have entered the Malfoy Vault otherwise. It would have eaten you."

"Yes. That's what I said. And I've read about blood bindings—it sounds like something I would remember." Her lack of memory of the event troubled her more than she wanted to admit. It could just mean that it happened when she was very young, but it also could mean that the memory had been magically removed from her mind.

"Those can't be easily reversed," Draco said. "I think. I'm not sure. I mostly know this from Uncle Rudolphus."

Hermione sighed. "This is complicated," she said. "I would much rather just focus on my schoolwork. And we have to be careful to not let Dumbledore on to what we know. Harry's godparents almost didn't want Severus to tell us."

"Severus was there?"

Somehow Hermione had forgotten to mention him in the excitement of describing an actual Animagus and her experience, as far as she was able to describe, that she now had with a _Fidellius_ charm that wasn't tied into blood wards.

"Yeah," she said. "Though he didn't seem terribly happy."

Draco nodded. "Do you think this has something to do with Dumbledore pulling Harry aside?" he asked.

"Everything," Hermione said. "Probably." She frowned, pulling rolls of parchment from her bag. "We should get to work, though," she said. "I'd rather not have to depend on Severus's leniency."

By some miracle (namely, Hermione and Draco's combined brainpower, Harry's genuine knack for DADA, and Ron's ability to come up with solutions on the fly if he was sufficiently motivated) they got not only all their homework done that night, but continued to, if not always get perfect marks in Harry and Ron's cases, then at the very least do very well for themselves in class.

Draco's favorite class was Astronomy. There was something about standing atop the Astronomy Tower at midnight that reminded him of home. It was different from Astrology, which was a form of Divination which Draco had always been told humans would never be good at. This was pure knowledge—the effect of the planets on potions, on more complex wardings, all things Draco was fascinated with. Not that he would be allowed to really look at anything more complex that orbital patterns; such things would be for when he was older, to his great eleven-year-old frustration.

Transfiguration was odd for them both. Professor McGonagall was strict, severe, and spoke with a voice full of bitter hatred of the Rebel Lords on the rare instance the topic came up. She never looked at Hermione when she spoke of such things, but knowing what Hermione did, now, it was hard not to think of her parents whenever she spoke.

Hermione's favorite class was Charms. Not because it was the most technically complicated, but because there was something neat about making magical occurrences pile on top of each other. And Professor Flitwick, who was also her house head, was a little less harsh on the Malfoys than the other professors, and seemed proud of Hermione for knack for conjuring little fires.

"Fire is more difficult than one might think," he told her, one day in early October, as her classmates were working on the levitation spell. "You are tapping into something rather fundamental."

Hermione nodded, unsure how to reply. "Professor," she said, "you mentioned at the beginning of the term that there are forces even magic cannot meddle with. Why isn't fire one of them?"

Flitwick sighed, right at eyelevel with her sitting and him standing. "Magic can bend," he said, "it can dent, it can even play with the laws which govern our world. But it cannot break them. Some things are final. You cannot unburn a house, even magically. You can only start the fire, perhaps contain it for an hour, or a year, or a century. You can only delay the inevitable, or speed it up. We are the same as muggles, in that regard." He said this last part almost too low for Hermione to hear.

She stared at him. Had she heard him correctly? He sounded more like her parents than she expected from a teacher.

Before she had a change to react, he smiled at her and said, "Miss Malfoy, would you care to demonstrate the Levitation Charm? Perhaps it will help those who have been struggling." He glanced over at where Longbottom and his group of friends sat. They seemed more focused on spelling small paper airplanes to fly around each other's heads than anything in the class.

"Of course, Professor!" Hermione said. "I would be delighted." She wanted her professors to like her, and though some of them made it difficult, she was still genuinely enthusiastic about what she could learn. There was just so much at Hogwarts. It was incredible, even with Severus's fear, and the letters from home where mother tried to sound happier than she was.

Neville Longbottom glared at her as she started the spell. "I can do that," he said, crossing his arms.

"Then demonstrate, Mr. Longbottom," Flitwick said. He winked at Hermione. Him interrupting her was not malicious.

Neville stood, a broad grin on his face.

" _Wingardia Leviosa_!" he shouted, flicking his wand and pointing it at a small pile of feathers.

He, instead of the feathers, floated a few inches off the ground. He landed seconds after, a deep frown on his face.

Hermione stifled a laugh behind her hand.

"What's so funny?" Neville demanded.

"Nothing," Hermione said. " _Wingardia Leviosa!_ " The pile of feathers on her desk rose smoothly that first, then with more jerky motions. She frowned. "I must have gotten the wand motion slightly off. My apologies."

Flitwick laughed. "My dear," he said, "perfection is rarely possible."

Hermione sighed. "That doesn't mean one shouldn't try to achieve it."

She sat back in her seat, ignoring Longbottom, who was staring daggers at her. He could do magic if he tried it, she knew, but he seemed to have this idea that he should be able to do whatever he wanted by wishing it.

His gaze did unsettle her somewhat, however, and she stayed by Draco the rest of the class, suddenly uncomfortable.

"You think you're so much better, don't you," Longbottom demanded after class, blocking her way out of the room.

"Yes," Hermione said. "I do."

Longbottom gaped, obviously surprised. "You're not supposed to just _say_ that," he said.  
"Well, it's true. I'm better at this class than you."

She turned left, uninterested in further conversation. He made her nervous, had since their first encounter. What she needed to do was tell Harry, Ron, and Draco about what Flitwick had said. It seemed important for reasons she could not exactly pin down. Maybe it meant the Ravenclaw common room was a little bit safer to talk in than she had thought.

Harry was the most suspicious of the Professor, having been told conflicting, and apparently confusing, things by his guardians. They both had mostly fond memories of Hogwarts, and even of Dumbledore in parts, but Sirius especially had been making vague statements which Harry refused to give any real details about, much to Hermione's frustration.

Ron, meanwhile, was mainly focused on the soon to happen Quidditch team tryouts. First years weren't allowed to play, of course, but while his older brothers were no longer speaking to him, he knew enough about the four house teams from what they had said before the sorting ceremony to explain it to his friends at length, multiple times.

Longbottom blocking her way out of the class did not seem important enough to mention. He was just envious, of course. She was just being honest with him.

"He could have just been philosophical," Draco said. Ron stuck his tongue out at him, muttering something about long words, and Draco rolled his eyes. "They're only long to you," he said, but didn't continue.

"I don't know why he thinks he's so impressive," Harry said. "He hasn't _done_ anything."

"The person attacking his parents stopped because she heard him crying, or something," Ron said. "I don't really remember, mum would talk about it sometimes." A pained look passed over his face. "She's been sending me letters. They haven't mentioned my house at all."

"I'm sorry," Hermione said.

Ron shrugged. "It's… weird, mostly." He sighed. "I dunno what I'll do about the hols, that's for certain." He looked at their homework with a pained expression on his face. "This is why I spend so much time thinking about Quidditch," he said glumly. "So I don't have to think about all this."

"You're in _Ravenclaw_ ," Draco said incredulously.

"Means I'm smart, not that I love homework," Ron said. "It'd be easier if I just had to play chess against the professors, or something. That would be something."

"You'd still better do it," Hermione said.

Ron sighed, and went back to his work. "You'd think Snape would assign us shorter essays, since he likes you two so much," he mumbled.

"Hush," Hermione said. "You wouldn't want to get him in trouble, would you?"

Ron muttered something else, something Hermione decided she would rather pretend she had not heard.

Hermione had assumed, perhaps a little optimistically, that her confrontation with Longbottom outside of Charms would be the last of her issues with him. He was just so… unnecessary. Unnecessarily rude, unnecessarily haughty—the list went on. He was from the sort of pureblood family that took itself seriously, that prided itself on having never been swayed by the rebel Lords.

It wasn't as though he was all that powerful. Not that any of them were that powerful, they were all first years and despite Harry's abilities during flying lessons even he wasn't getting onto the Quidditch team early, or anything.

That she turned out to have been wrong in those assumptions about Longbottom upset her more than what he actually did. How could she be so poor a judge of character; she was good at everything else, but this was a case of how absolutely mysterious the behavior of other children could be. Adults made sense: their behavior was controlled by things she did not always know about, but how they acted towards her could generally be predicted.

It was near morning, in that it was near midnight, and the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor First Years were following Professor Sinistra up the Astronomy Towers for their lesson.

"Hey!" Hermione heard behind her suddenly. It was Longbottom. "You're walking too slowly!" As he shoved past her, the bag holding her books and telescope tumbled out of her grasp, leaving her standing empty-handed, now really holding up the line.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, trying not to cry, but Longbottom was already far ahead of her.

Draco, whom she had been walking with, bent over to help pick up her books.

"He's a twit," he said gloomily.

"I haven't _done_ anything to him," Hermione complained as she gathered her things. By this time, they had been waiting so long that Ron and Harry, who had been far behind them, had caught up.

"You don't need to do things to twits for them to be twits," Harry said. "That's what Sirius says, anyway, though Remus shushes him."

"I think mum would just yell at them for saying 'twit'" Ron added, which made Hermione laugh a little.

"Anyway," Draco said, very seriously, "you will have to get your revenge on him."

"Excuse me?" Hermione asked.

"A duel, perhaps." He seemed a little excited at the prospect. "You would beat him, of course."

Hermione was not as enthused at the prospect as her brother. She wanted as little to do with Longbottom as possible.

Had her treated her liked that earlier in the year, or had she come to Hogwarts without any friends, it was the sort of thing that would have made her cry. She knew it, in the same way she knew that she had ten fingers or that Luna Lovegood had pretty hair.

Harry seemed to share her doubts, but Ron's enthusiasm for Draco's idea ("It's what the git deserves!") swept him along, until the three boys were talking about her upcoming "vengeance" as though it were a given.  
The conversation only stopped when they reached the top of the tower, Sinistra's greeting stopping all chatter. They only had so long, since they needed to be up for classes the next day, and she was not the sort of professor who approved of her classes falling behind.

"Tonight, we will be going over our constellations."

There was a collective groan.

Class itself was boring, but uneventful. Harry and Ron spent it coming up with little rhymes about the constellations under their breath, Ron doing most of the composing and Harry egging him on.

As they were packing up their instruments, Hermione found herself once more facing Malfoy. "Hello, Granger," he said.

She and Draco were just about to head back down the tower steps. Harry and Ron had gone on ahead.

Before he could say anything else, Draco said, "Hermione wants to duel you."

Hermione groaned. Not this again. They all had homework to do, and she was certain that a duel was against school rules.

"Oh?" Neville said. He looked over at his friend, whose name was possibly Seamus Finnegan. "You really interested in a fight, or are you too afraid?"

"I don't need to show my bravery by fighting you," she said. "My parents were braver than you could ever be!"

It was a bit of a nonsensical rejoinder, but it seemed reasonable to her at the time. She was eleven, after all, and her parents were, even after everything she had recently found out, the wisest and best people in the world to her. Time had lessened the sting of the news somewhat, that and some dubious research into blood bondings which had required much harrowing sneaking around the librarian.

"Your parents are traitors!" Neville said. "They're friends with the people that put my parents in St. Mungo's. That's not being brave. That's being evil."

Hermione suddenly found herself feeling very angry. She had written a letter to her mother, after her first real encounter with Longbottom, asking about what exactly Aunt Bellatrix had done to his parents, and she had answered that Bellatrix had been grieving after Tom's death, and was not in her right mind.

That had not been very comforting.

Professor Sinistra did not seem to notice the growing argument, absorbed in adjusting something on her telescope.

"I haven't seen Aunt Bellatrix in a long time," she answered. "I'm sorry about your parents."

She couldn't imagine not having parents. It was like trying to picture what it was like to be a boy—she just couldn't do it. She didn't like feeling bad for Longbottom, though. It made things messy.

That seemed to bring him up short. "No, you're not," he said. "You're just saying that."

That brought Hermione's anger back. How dare he? He didn't know how she was feeling.

"Fine," she said. "You want a duel? Meet me in the trophy room in two days at midnight. I'll see you there."

As she stalked away, she managed to make her robes twirl in a dramatic manner, which made her very happy.

It took until she got back to the dorm for Hermione to return to her senses.  
"What was I thinking?" she asked Draco. "It's completely stupid! We'll get in trouble. I was told not to get Dumbledore's attention, and this is exactly the sort of thing he'd know about!"

Dumbledore didn't seem to be a hands on kind of headmaster, but they'd all just seen him around, and he'd tried to get Harry to speak with him a few more times. By coincidence, he'd always been too busy or otherwise occupied, but it was a matter of time. But that was something else for Hermione to worry about, and it wasn't what she was thinking about in that moment.

"We'll only get trouble if we get caught," Draco said. "We used to sneak around the manor all the time. It will be similar."

It would not be similar at all. Hogwarts was so ancient it made Malfoy Manor seem a child in comparison, and in those years it had grown strange. Their month and a half of experience with the place was not enough to go undetected by, for example, the portraits and a possibly wandering Peeves.

Hermione shook her head. "We should just back out," she said.

"And let Longbottom make a fool out of us?" Draco shook his head. "Look, if you won't do it, I will. Either Harry or Draco could be my seconds."

Hermione sighed. She had pride, of course—she was a Malfoy in every way that mattered, and that was something to be proud of, despite everything—but not like this. But she couldn't let her brother get in trouble by himself, either.

"Fine," she said. "You be my second, then."

Draco grinned. "Okay!" he said. "I'll go tell Ron and Harry."

That was something Hermione didn't like: being in a different room from all her friends.

Maybe she should try and get to know Luna Lovegood better. She seemed nice, if a bit odd.

* * *

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